Jury

Many urban areas have encountered difficulties in providing racially and economically diverse jury pools. Critics of the criminal justice system point out that people of color are overrepresented in the number of individuals arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned, and underrepresented on criminal juries.

In 1993 the Minnesota Supreme Court Task Force on Racial Bias in the Judicial System issued a report that called for changes in jury management, so as to encourage diversity in juries. The judicial system took several steps to respond to the report.

The Minnesota Supreme Court amended jury management rules to authorize Hennepin and Ramsey Counties, the most populous and racially diverse counties in the state, to adopt new jury selection procedures that guarantee that, by percentage, minority group representation on the GRAND JURY is equal to that in the two counties. Hennepin County implemented a plan that allows grand jurors to be selected randomly unless there are no people of color among the first twenty-one jurors selected, in which case the selection process continues until at least two of the twenty-three grand jurors are people of color.

At the state level, the judicial system secured funds from the legislature to raise the rate of daily juror pay and to pay for drop-in day care for jurors who normally do not use day care. The system also began to reimburse jurors for their mileage to and from the courthouse. These steps were taken to decrease the economic hardship on potential jurors who might otherwise ignore a jury summons or ask to be excused.