"You don't want a minority defendant being convicted of any crime and having their punishment assessed by an all-white jury," said former Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Charles Baird. "Whenever you do that, you undermine the legitimacy of the process.

Statements like this one from Judge Baird undermine the legitimacy of the process. If you doubt it, invert the sentence: "You don't want a white defendant convicted of any crime and having their punishment assessed by an all ____________ jury."

Does he mean that because a juror and a defendant are of the same race that the defendant will enjoy a lighter punishment? Are juries made up of whites inherently unjust or are minority jurors prone to nullify or give a lesser sentence to a defendant from their group? Either construction is an insult. The invidious notion that a jury of my peers means a jury of my race is a dangerous proposition. The vast majority of defendants are white folks. What if law or policy had required that the murderers of James Byrd be judged by an all white jury? Would that have lent "legitimacy" to the process?

There is an article in the current Texas Bar Journal, "Are We Getting A Jury of Our Peers?" which seems to take a similar stand to that of Judge Baird.

Both Biard and the Journal article are utterly devoid of any concern or even understanding of what a jury is supposed to do: determine guilt or innocence, and if guilty, assess a proper punishment who's first purpose is protecting society. In short, a trial is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

I am sceptical of claims that there are all these great potential jurors out there, who for whatever reason, just can't make it to jury service. A couple of years ago, I tried a case in one of our counties and we ran out of venirmen. The statute calls for the sheriff to go out and round up potential jurors in such a case. But the defense atty. moved that the court direct the sheriff to make an effort to find the scofflaws who failed to appear for jury service. (About 60% of those called to jury service in this county, fail to appear). The court agreed with the motion, and the sheriff tried to find all these scofflaws.

The next a.m., in walked the fruits of the sheriff's labors: Six new people came into the courtroom. The rest the S.O. could not find, or discovered they had moved, died, or were out-of-state or overseas. Of the six, one was a baby who looked like he was less than 2 weeks old, in the arms of his mother. She took her exemption. Another was an extremely old man, using a walker. After painfully negociating his way to a seat, he quickly took his exemption, and slowly hobbled off. Another was a fellow who had just gotten back from working off-shore, and didn't get the notice until the previous night. Two were just knuckleheads who didn't bother to respond to their jury notices. All 3 of these remaining people were eventually struck for cause.

I believe a major reason for the low response rate is that a large percent of the jury summons come from D/L and state I.D. card info, which tends to include lots of people who are not qualified to be jurors, either because they don't live in the county, or are not citizens. Additionally, many of the addresses are not current in this class of potential jurors.

It's too bad that Baird and his friends are not more concerned with the quality of jurors rather than their demographics.

I'm not sure where this push comes from either but in the last round of sweeps week one of our local TV reporters did a similar story. We did a stand-up in the courthouse hallway and her first question was,"It seems more and more people are disregarding their jury notices. How many billionaires had you had on your juries over the years?" I literally laughed out loud and replied,"How many are there?" She went on to lament the fact that the judges do not penalize or attach the no-shows and I told her I really did not want a jury of folks who had been arrested for the trial.

Since Batson was cut loose from its constitutional moorings of remediation for a discriminatory pattern in the exercise of peremptory strikes, the notion that juries exist for some purpose other than finding facts has been easier to argue and sell.

Judge Baird has begun to appear frequently in Houston Chronicle articles as a throwdown "expert" on criminal justice issues. I can only assume he has given up his job as a visiting judge. I hear he is running for a district bench in Austin.

Are his statements contrary to the judicial code of ethics? Is he currently held to those standards?

John, do you think David Dow at UH is starting to get jealous?

I could not agree more with B Leonard's statement. I was struck by Judge's Baird's comments as being racist and told my boss could you imagine someone saying the reverse? I think Chuck Rosenthal statements in the Chronicle were absolutely right when he said this whole thought process is wrong.

The idea of rounding up people who care so little about the civic duty as potential jurors is scary. I live in one of those god awful (according to the article) zip codes where most Harris County jurors come from. Funny, but my three closest neighbors & friends are all Hispanic, yet, I can't be trusted to sit as a juror b/c I come from a zip code which is perceived to be all white & wealthy. Funny, also since I'm a prosecutor and my husband is a Houston Police Officer so clearly we "ain't wealthy".