EVERETT — People of color and those with lower incomes are underrepresented in nearly all Washington jury pools, according to a statewide collection of jury data.
Conspicuously absent from the new survey?
The third largest county in the state.
Snohomish County Superior Court was planning on participating in the largest collection of state jury data to date, but had concerns about discretion of jurors’ privacy, Court Administrator Andrew Somers said.
Researchers reportedly never responded to their concerns.
“Many courts expressed questions about this arrangement given the collection of court data and the new expanded demographic survey, so it is not an uncommon issue,” Thomas Frank of the Minority and Justice Commission of Washington Courts said in an email. “We fully expect we will be able to coordinate with Snohomish in the future.”
Kathleen Kyle, executive director for Snohomish County Public Defender Association, said the study’s broader findings are “very consistent” with what she has seen in jury pools for Snohomish County Superior Court.
Most defendants are of low-income status, but are almost never tried by juries who are actually their peers, Kyle said.
“It’s a constitutional right that the jury should be selected from a fair cross-section of the community,” Kyle said in an interview. “When significant portions of our community are excluded from jury service, we are not meeting that right to a guaranteed fair trial.”
Seattle University researchers collected nearly a quarter-million surveys from jurors serving across the state over a 17-month period ending in 2023, in partnership with the Minority and Justice Commission of Washington Courts. Jurors answered a questionnaire identifying their race, gender and sexual orientation.
Research efforts have made Washington “a frontrunner for jury diversity efforts in the nation,” experts wrote in the study.
This most recent study is part of a 10-year initiative to promote jury diversity in the state, Frank said in an interview with The Daily Herald, calling it the “largest iteration in a series of endeavors to better understand Washington jury pools.”
After 10 years of research, the findings did not surprise Frank.
With over half of the respondents coming from King County, researchers found jurors of color, specifically those identifying as “Black, American Indian, and Alaskan Native,” remain “generally underrepresented” in those who answer jury summons.
“The sad reality of this work is the inequities are so predictable that there’s often not a lot of new information just in the empirical observation,” Frank said in an interview.
Jurors, identified as Black, Indigenous, Asian-Pacific Islander, Hispanic-Latino and mixed race, overrepresent the “lowest income categories” of $0 to $49,999 a year, the study says. White jurors made up a majority of the “highest income categories” of incomes $150,000 and above.
“On average, jurors reporting for jury service have combined annual household incomes above the median in their respective counties,” researchers wrote.
People of color were more likely to have barriers, such as work and family care, that prevented them from participating, researchers found.
Jurors reporting for duty also “generally have higher levels of education,” according to the study. Researchers called these findings a “clear correlation” between race and income.
In Snohomish County, jurors make $10 a day, according to the county website.
“We have this stratification in our society based on socioeconomic status and race, and the interaction between the two,” lead project researcher Peter Collins said in an interview with The Daily Herald. “It’s historical and it’s kind of ingrained, so it’s not surprising to see those same patterns popping up in different aspects of our systems.”
The results come as Senate Bill 5128 went into effect on July 23, a law aimed at increasing jury diversity by December 2024 through the following methods:
■ Provide all courts with a method to collect data on a juror’s race, ethnicity, age, employment status and income.
■ Establish a work group to make recommendations for child care assistance for jurors.
■ Allow electronic jury summons to widen the pool of respondents.
■ Raise juror wages up to $25 and no less than $10 a day.
On Thursday, the state Supreme Court ruled King County defendant Paul Rivers, a Black man convicted of two criminal charges from a jury with no Black jurors, was not entitled to a new trial based on his claim. Rivers argued his conviction should be reversed under his constitutional right of a jury cross-sectioned of the community.
“No one in this case disputes that jury diversity is lacking in Washington and that more can and must be done to promote juror diversity statewide,” the ruling read. “We conclude that Rivers’s venire and King County’s jury selection system satisfy constitutional minimums.”
In Snohomish County, officials in Superior Court have advocated for more jury diversity efforts at the legislative level.
A 2021 survey of King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties jury pools found 76.8% of respondents identified as white alone and 82% identified as heterosexual, while 61% were married. The average household income of respondents was above $100,000 per year, which is above the 2021 Snohomish County average at $86,000.
White people, with no Hispanic or Latino identification, make up 73.8% of the Snohomish County population, according to 2022 Census estimates.
Past data suggests the county’s jury pool is still more in line with its demographics than many around the state. According to a survey published in 2021, Whatcom County courts had a juror pool with 9.8% of people identifying as non-white, while the voting age population was 14% non-white. That’s about 70% of what it should be, with equal representation. Snohomish County Superior Court’s figure was 95% on par.
In that same study, 21 of 22 court systems reported minorities were underrepresented. (Clark County was the one exception.)
Snohomish County Prosecutor Jason Cummings pointed out most victims of crimes also often come from marginalized backgrounds.
“It’s important for those victims to also have juries that are representative of this community,” Cummings said. “To understand and be able to apply their common sense, everyday life to the rule of law and the facts of the case,”
The prosecutor believes it is up to the state lawmakers to improve jury diversity in courts across Washington.
“We really need Olympia to put money on the table to be able to address that inequity,” Cummings said in an interview. “You can sell jury duty as one of the greatest weeks of your life, that it’s your civic duty. But at $10 a day? It rings hollow.”
Somers said the court has long advocated for jury diversity at the legislative level.
“I think some of the things (Senate Bill) 5128 was aiming to correct is going to increase jury diversity for us, which is a good thing,” Somers said.
Frank said the commission will continue to coordinate with more Washington courts in the collection of jury data, to better understand how to increase diversity. Researchers noted their current data only focused on those who answered their jury summons, but will focus their future research on those who do not respond.
“This information will only get better over time,” Frank said.
Frank and Somers both hope Snohomish County Superior Court will participate in the project in the near future.
Maya Tizon; 425-339-3434; maya.tizon@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @mayatizon.
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