Opinion ID: 2631133
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Trial Court's Comments About Hardship Exclusions

Text: Defendant accuses the trial court of misconduct in explaining to the jury panel the circumstances of hardship that would warrant being excused from jury service. This is what the trial court said: With respect to hardship, there are certain individuals that fall into a category where serving on a case such as this would be an extraordinary hardship. If you are the sole support of your family or you are you share the responsibility for the support of the family or your own sole support and you work for someone who will not pay you to serve on jury duty or will only pay you for five days or 10 days and at that point you will be losing salary and will be unable to support yourself or your family, that would be an extraordinary hardship. If you have a medical condition that would prevent you from being able to serve over the period of time that I have suggested, and there may be other unique situations where it would be an extraordinary hardship. [¶] What is not a hardship is `my employer really needs me at work right now. This is really a busy time.' In the law there are specific criteria that I apply to hardship. `I would rather sit on a shorter case. I don't mind serving, but I just can't serve on a long case.' Those kinds of personal preferences I am not permitted by the law to excuse you based upon that kind of hardship. [¶] But if it is an undue hardship based upon financial, medical or some other situation that you think is unique to you that would cause the Court to excuse you, I will consider all of those requests today. Defendant made no objection to the trial court's statement. But he now contends the statement deprived him of a fair cross-section of the community because it may have resulted in excluding prospective jurors in lower economic groups. By failing to make a contemporaneous objection to the trial court's statement, defendant has not preserved this issue for appeal. ( People v. Champion (1995) 9 Cal.4th 879, 906-907, 39 Cal.Rptr.2d 547, 891 P.2d 93.) In any event, the claim lacks merit. In reviewing that claim, the pertinent inquiry is whether a cognizable class has been excluded. ( People v. Johnson (1989) 47 Cal.3d 1194, 1214, 255 Cal.Rptr. 569, 767 P.2d 1047.) On point here is this statement from Johnson: Even assuming that only poor persons were given hardship exclusions, a fact not proven here, persons with low incomes do not constitute a cognizable class. (Ibid.)