'It goes a long way,' Summit County Council president says of plans to expand jury pool

Summit County plans to expand its jury pool beyond just registered voters to include those with driver’s licenses and state identification cards.

This change, aimed at getting a more diverse pool of jurors, is expected to begin in September. It will apply to both the selection of petit or regular juries and grand juries.

“There are a lot of challenges within the jury pool process,” said Summit County Council President Veronica Sims, who urged the county’s judges to make this change. “Expanding it will help us get at some of that. I think it goes a long way.”

The discussion of how Summit County draws its jurors intensified around the selection of a special grand jury last month to decide whether eight Akron officers who shot and killed Jayland Walker should face criminal charges. The grand jury returned a no bill, which means the officers won’t be prosecuted.

More: What to know about the special grand jury convening Monday on Jayland Walker's shooting

Sims and Councilwoman Erin Dickinson recently made a presentation to the 10 judges of the Summit County Common Pleas Court’s General Division, who unanimously agreed that the jury pool should be expanded.

"We're hoping we're going to involve more of our community in the jury system," said Susan Baker Ross, the presiding judge in Summit County Common Pleas Court whose job includes overseeing the grand jury process.

Ross said the judges must still approve a change to the court's jury management plan and then have a jury management software company generate the new list. She said the county currently has 300,000 registered jurors and 385,000 licensed drivers, so the jury pool will increase by at least 85,000 people, and possibly more, depending on how much overlap there is between the two groups.

"We will know how large once we have the jury software folks merge the list," she said. "For now, it's unknown."

Summit joins long list of courts with expanded jury pool

State law allows courts to draw jurors from voter registration and driver's license rolls.

Summit County Common Pleas Court will join a long list of courts in Ohio to use both sources for choosing juries, with 47 courts having already taken this step, according to a list from the Ohio Jury Management Association.

That list includes Alliance Municipal Court, Franklin Municipal Court, Marion Municipal Court, Medina Municipal Court and Portage County Municipal Court.

Montogomery County has the only common pleas court in a large urban area that draw jurors from both registered voters and licensed drivers, according to the list.

In Summit County, the expanded pool will also apply to regular juries in Akron, Barberton and Stow Municipal courts, because the same jury commissioner also handles these courts, Ross said.

Education campaign is in the works

County leaders and court officials plan to work together to educate Summit County residents about the importance of jury duty, though the details of what this will involve are still being decided.

Sims said she understands that not everyone may be thrilled about being called for jury duty because of the expanded process, but she hopes they might change their mind when they learn more about it.

“I’m not hesitant about doing whatever we can to help educate constituents,” Sims said.

Ross said she gets positive comments from people who serve on juries about the experience, which is contrary to the perception that many have about what it's like.

"People groan when they get called," she said. "When they get here, and are in the middle of the process, it ignites in them a bit of a passion to be able to do something like this."

Sims thinks expanding the jury pool can achieve better representation not only racially, but also in terms of a diversity of thought.

Ross hopes expanding the pool will improve diversity of race, thought and age, with potential jurors often skewing older.

In the grand jury that was just seated and will begin serving in July, Ross said there are two people of color out of 14 jurors. She said many people request to be excused from grand jury duty because of the longer time commitment involved, with them serving for two months.

The expanded process may come with an extra cost. Ross said the court expects to need to call more people for jury duty because many of the addresses of people with driver's licenses won't be current. She estimated the extra cost at about $4,000 more a year.

"I'm going to be interested to see how it goes and whether it does increase our diversity of age, thought and ethnicity," she said. "We're hoping it does."

The change has so far received a positive response from those involved in county's courts.

Jeff Laybourne, a prominent Akron defense attorney who represents people facing serious charges including murder, sees this as a positive change.

“A wider and deeper venire will result in greater jury diversity, which will inevitably assist in ensuring a fair trial for the accused,” he said.

Stephanie Warsmith can be reached at swarsmith@thebeaconjournal.com, 330-996-3705 and on Twitter: @swarsmith@thebeaconjournal.com.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Summit expanding its jury pool to include those with driver's licenses