Defense for Tama County man questions jury pool selection process

TOLEDO - A murder trial in Tama County was continued this week to allow the defense time to investigate the process of how jurors are summoned for jury duty and if the process somehow hindered Native Americans from being in the jury pool.

Tom Gaul, attorney with the Iowa Public Defender's Special Defense Unit, argued Tuesday that his client Dustin Jefferson, charged with first-degree murder, is a member of distinctive group according to the constitution, being a member of the Meskwaki Settlement, and has a right to have a representative sample of Native Americans in the jury pool.

Gaul said Thursday in a phone interview nine in the pool were excused from duty by the judge after being summoned and filling out questionnaires for medical or other valid reasons, and 105 were in the remaining pool with six being identified as Native American were to show up Monday when the trial started. Only 88 showed up in court, 19 didn't show and only two of those were Native American.

'The judge continued the case so we can investigate what happened,” Gaul said. 'Now, I don't know yet what happened and why. I'm not saying anything was wrong at this point but we want a chance to look into the procedure. I don't know enough about how the system of (calling) jurors is done at this point.”

Tama County Attorney Brent Heeren and Assistant Attorney General Laura Roan in Des Moines, didn't resist the continuance Tuesday. The prosecutors didn't return phone messages left last week.

Carroll Edmondson, 6th Judicial District Court administrator, which supervises the clerks' offices and in Tama, Linn, Johnson, Benton and Iowa counties, said every county uses a statewide jury management system. The software program 'randomly” selects names for the jury pools. Residents in each county who possess a driver's license and/or are a registered voter are eligible to be selected for a pool.

Ken Gard, Linn County District jury manager, said nobody can alter or tamper with the software. The program creates the eligible pool and he or another clerk can pull a certain number needed for a particular trial and excuse jurors according to the judge's orders but they don't have anything to do with creating the random list.

Gard said in Linn County about 92 percent on average of jurors summoned show up the day of trial. Last week, there were two felony and two misdemeanor trials in Linn, so 122 names were drawn and 108 showed up.

Edmondson said there hasn't been an issue regarding racial makeup of a jury panel in this district to delay or continue a trial. He's aware of issues being raised in inner cities but it hasn't occurred in this district and not much in Iowa.

Guy Cook, attorney with Grefe and Sidney in Des Moines, agreed with Edmondson about it not coming up often across the state, and he said typically the challenges involving racial composition don't succeed. He is familiar with one incident in Scott and one in Polk counties in recent years which involved lack of African Americans in the pool but those arguments didn't succeed.

'The burden for the defense is a high standard,” Cook said. 'A ‘jury of peers' isn't in the constitution. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to a speedy and public trial and an impartial jury.”

Cook said an attorney would have to show there is a distinct group of people in the county, that distinct group has been excluded from the jury pool and the system used to draw the jurors would create an exclusion.

'It would have to be a substantial deviation that wouldn't allow for a fair cross section of the community,” Cook said. 'Randomness isn't systematic exclusion.”

Gaul speculated that the system in place now to draw jurors may work in 98 counties but may not work in Tama County.

'It's a unique county,” Gaul said. 'It has the largest population of Native Americans in the state.”

The 2013 population for Tama County was 17,576 and 7.7 percent of the population is Native American and Alaska Native, according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Over 83 percent is white and 7.9 percent is Hispanic or Latino.

Gaul said there will likely be further motions or information submitted to the court once he has completed his investigation of the process.

Jefferson's trial is reset to May 25 in Tama County District Court.