Chapter 9 Challenges to the Array

• Library: Picking a Civil Jury: A Guide for Illinois Trial Lawyers (2015 Ed.)

CHAPTER 9 - CHALLENGES TO THE ARRAY

I. Fair Cross Section Requirement (6^th Amendment)

"This is outrageous ... it could not happen on accident. This was all rigged someplace."
-Attorney Sam Adams, Jr. reacting to the 50-person jury pool brought to the courtroom in the criminal case against his client, African-American Chicago Alderman, William Beavers. The pool had no African-American males.

A challenge to the "array" is a challenge to the venire or the whole panel of jurors being presented for selection and is usually a challenge to the manner and procedure from which the array of jurors is selected. All venires, whether for a civil or criminal case, must represent a fair cross section of the community.¹ The fair cross section requirement requires that no single identifiable group has been systematically excluded from the venire. For example, in Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., the U.S. Supreme Court dealt with the personal/wrongful death case filed against an allegedly negligent railroad company.² Wage earners were found to have been systematically excluded from the venire. The petitioner successfully argued that the jury commissioner had systematically excluded wage earners from the venire in an apparent attempt to exclude those who would suffer the economic hardship of missing work for jury service. The Supreme Court noted that, while the commissioner may have had good intentions, the exclusion of wage earners "must be counted among those tendencies which weaken the...