Where I Stand -- Mike O'Callaghan: The process of picking a good jury isn't an easy job

DISTRICT COURT JUDGE Myron Leavitt gave television viewers an excellent example of how to run a courtroom. Some judges would still be watching the selection of jurors more than a week after the Jeremy Strohmeyer case had been settled. Leavitt had moved the jury selection to completion in four days instead of four weeks.

The selection of juries has always been regarded as a delicate and important activity of the justice system. A recent Nevada Supreme Court Task Force Administration and Legislative Committee reports it will follow up and:

The former judge also believes that to get good juries and not just a bunch of the least bright citizens, they should have some reasonable compensation. He also wants:

* Eight-person juries.

* Jurors to be encouraged to talk about evidence and ask their own questions.

* Jurors to be given simple instructions in plain English.

* Improved physical conditions in jury rooms.

* That the jurors not be kept waiting and wasting time.

* Jurors be sequestered only as a last resort.

* Blue-ribbon juries selected for complex cases.

Katz also recognizes the increasing number of juries that ignore the law and evidence and try to send a message to a society they dislike. Some of them get on juries by lying so they can carry out their mission of contempt. He recommends that statutes allow for jury decisions of 8-1 or 11-1 depending upon the number of jurors.

"Two steps can be taken to discourage lying jurors.

"The first is to prosecute them for perjury when they give false information or willfully omit facts, which if known, materially affect their ability to be fair. The second is to draft a special statute that would permit such a prosecution. Today we see jurors lying so often we just sort of ignore it. If we took it seriously, maybe the jurors would also."

An attempt to increase the size of the jury pool and to make the opportunity to serve more attractive would also create the possibility of getting a more intelligent and better educated jury. Defense attorneys with weak cases sometimes do their best to seek the most stupid and bigoted jury possible. Katz quotes defense attorney F. Lee Bailey as saying, "(The jury system is) a startling weakness in our legal machinery. You never get a jury of your peers. In most states you get a jury of elderly and retired, telephone company employees, civil servants, and so forth. The rest either duck jury duty or are eliminated in trial selection."

More than a century ago Mark Twain wrote in "Roughing It": "When the peremptory challenges were all exhausted, a jury of 12 men were impaneled -- a jury who swore that they had neither heard, read, talked about nor expressed an opinion concerning a murder which the very cattle in the corrals, the Indians in the sagebrush and the stones in the street were cognizant of!"

Katz believes that the enlarging of the jury pool should be accompanied by banishing the use of jury consultants and further limiting the number of peremptory challenges. Mark Twain wanted to take jury selection even further when writing, "I desire to tamper with the jury law. I wish to so alter it as to put a premium on intelligence and character, and close the jury box against idiots ... and people who do not read newspapers. But no doubt, I shall be defeated."

I read "Justice Overruled" and articles about jury selection before watching the Strohmeyer jury selection. Although I couldn't see the faces of the jurors, their answers to questions made me believe they could be a good jury. Many of the pitfalls identified in my reading were avoided with Judge Leavitt keeping a firm hand on proceedings. Of course, both the prosecuting and defense attorneys are some of the best available so the combination resulted in a plea bargain that made good sense and put a killer away for life.

I believe that Mark Twain would also agree with what happened in Judge Leavitt's court.

MIKE O'CALLAGHAN is executive editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

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