Pick-a-Pal Grand Jury Bill Abruptly Dies in House

Texas judges have flexed their political capital to sabotage a bill that aimed to reform the way they pick people for grand juries.
Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, abruptly stopped a May 11 debate on his bill, House Bill 282, after he failed to persuade his colleagues to table another lawmaker's amendment that would have exempted counties with fewer than 500,000 people from the bill's requirements.

Rest of story: Grand Jury Bill

That's ok by me. We experimented with the jury wheel in selecting GJ before. In a small county, my experience was the GJ was far from a fair representation of the county using the wheel. We had very few minorities and geographically, the GJ was loaded toward cities with few representing small unincorporated communities. Perhaps my Judges are just careful in making sure the GJ accurately reflects the community when using the commissioner system.

Grimes County, right? Navasota is the city?

Yup! Big City probs. Navasota makes up about 1/3 of the County population yet, using the jury wheel system, we ended up with about 2/3 of our GJ from there. Racial make up was even more skewed. Using commissioners, we always have at least some minority representation. Certainly closer to what our demographics are. The same can not be said for the Jury Wheel.

It was a solution in search of a problem. Grand juries work fine with jury commissioners, so why change?

Jury commissioners tend to pick quality people who take their responsibilities seriously. Randomly calling people to grand jury service will greatly increase the number of criminals, low lifes and mentally disturbed people into grand juries, and increase the likelihood of sensitive information leaking from the GJ.