Press Release
Jury Appreciation Week
Appreciating our Jurors
The second full week of May is Jury Appreciation Week, and on behalf of your local court, I want to thank all the jurors who have served in Yolo Superior Court in the last year.
But gratitude is not enough, and in this column, I want to give the residents of Yolo County some information about how our system works, what we have done to make it better, and where it needs improvement.
First, let's review a few basics. Trial by jury is an ancient right, firmly established in our state and federal constitutions. Jurors are "triers of fact,'" which means they hear evidence and decide what happened. The judge determines the law that applies to the case and gives the jury written instructions to guide their deliberations. In criminal cases, the jury decides if the prosecution has proved the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In civil cases, the jury decides if the plaintiff has proved his or her case by a preponderance of the evidence, and if so, what damages should be awarded. There are 12 jurors in every case and a few alternates. In criminal cases, jury verdicts must be unanimous, but in civil cases agreement by three-quarters of the jury is enough.
How are jurors selected?
The first step in the process is the issuance of a summons, which is the blue card you get from the court. In 2023, Yolo court sent out 45,304 summons, representing a sizeable percentage of the citizenry in a county of about 220,000 residents.
The summons will direct you to visit the court's online jury portal and fill out a short questionnaire. It also tells you to check the day before your first day of service to find out if we need you or not. We never know how many trials will be ready each week, so often we have "extra" jurors.
The next step is hardship screening, where we inform potential jurors of the trial length, and determine, one by one, whether each potential juror has a scheduling conflict (like an important medical appointment) that requires postponement of service. As explained below, there is now a remote option for hardship screening.
Next, those jurors who pass through hardship screening are told to report to the courthouse, typically on a Monday morning. From there, potential jurors are sent to a courtroom where jury selection begins. During jury selection some jurors may be excused "for cause" (if there is a bona fide reason they cannot be fair and impartial), or by peremptory challenge by one side or the other. A peremptory challenge allows parties to remove a limited number of potential jurors without stating a reason. This vetting process can take a few hours or a few days, depending on the nature and complexity of the case.
Ultimately, 12 jurors will be sworn for the trial, plus a few alternates, in case someone gets sick or otherwise becomes unavailable.
In 2023, 1,038 jurors were sworn in Yolo, and they heard a total of 80 cases: 11 civil cases, 38 felony criminal cases, and 31 misdemeanor criminal cases. For a county of our size, this is great productivity -- while some have lamented the decline of the jury trial in our country, the system is alive and well in Yolo.
The Yolo court has made some changes in recent years to improve our jury system. First, we've re-instituted procedures to hold potential jurors responsible if they ignore their summons. It's not fair that some people shirk jury duty while others serve, and the court can (and will) fine people up to $1,500 if they repeatedly ignore the jury summons. But we want your service and not your money, so please respond to the jury summons -- if there is an obstacle to your service please follow the instructions on the card rather than ghosting the court.
Second, we now allow potential jurors to appear remotely (by video or telephone) for the first appearance, which is hardship screening. In the olden days (before the pandemic), all potential jurors would show up in person, meaning that hundreds of people traveled to the courthouse every week while only a few ended up serving.
But in 2020 we created an option for remote hardship screening, and it has proven immensely popular, with most potential jurors "reporting" for their first day of service from home or work. (Trials are always conducted in person -- remote appearance is only an option for the initial screening.)
While we've made improvements to Yolo's jury system, we can do better. One problem is the "burned juror" phenomenon. A "burned juror" is an individual who was told to report to court for trial, only to be sent home minutes or hours later because no case is ready for trial. In 2023, we had 1,840 burned jurors in Yolo County.
There are many reasons why jurors get burned. Sometimes a case resolves on the courthouse steps. Sometimes a party, lawyer, or witness gets sick or has a personal emergency. And sometimes a trial that seemed "ready" the week before is no longer ready, because of new evidence, a new settlement offer, or some other development.
Burned jurors end up taking time away from work or other obligations for service that never occurs. This is wasteful -- it would be much better if they were called off ahead of time. An unnecessary trip to court may be a minor inconvenience for each individual, but the aggregate effect is that a significant amount of juror time gets wasted.
So how can this be fixed?
We can't repeal Murphy's Law, and there will always be unexpected events that prevent trials from going forward, so the number of burned jurors will never be zero.
But the court is collaborating with our justice partners, including the District Attorney and Public Defender, to reduce the number of "burned jurors" by doing a better job of anticipating problems that might derail a case. The week before trial, we have a "readiness conference" where the judge talks to the lawyers to see if the case will be ready for trial, and to explore the prospects for resolution. Our judges are now putting increased emphasis on these conferences, to better learn from the lawyers whether there are potential problems that may prevent the trial from being ready, so that any roadblocks can be addressed before the first day of trial. A year from now I'll report back on whether our "burned juror" rate has declined.
In the meantime, I want to again thank all the Yoloans who have served our justice system in the last year. President Adams described representative government and the jury system as the "heart and lungs" of liberty, and in Yolo our civic cardiovascular system is going strong thanks to our hardworking jurors.