Judge to Set Up Dual Grand Jury System

Three decades after complaints first surfaced about Latinos’ being excluded from the county grand jury, Los Angeles County’s presiding judge said Tuesday that he will create a second panel drawn from a more ethnically diverse pool of prospective jurors.

Rather than being nominated or screened by a committee of Superior Court judges, grand jurors for the new panel will be drawn from voting lists and Department of Motor Vehicles registration rolls. Members of the new panel will serve a maximum of 10 days and focus on sensitive criminal matters.

“I know I have the authority. I think the community will be well served by this,” said Superior Court Judge Victor E. Chavez, who presides over the nation’s largest local court system. He said he will invoke his own judicial authority to create the new panel July 5.

It will supplement a grand jury that will be impaneled July 1. Members of that panel, drawn from a pool of 141 volunteers and judicial nominees, will serve year-long terms as government watchdogs--auditing government agencies and issuing reports and recommendations. The new criminal panel--made up of 23 members and four alternates--will be called as needed, said Chavez. He estimated the annual cost of a second grand jury at $500,000 and said he is confident that the county will provide funding.

Chavez said the courts have been exploring the dual system for several years, but have been unable to implement it because of inadequate funding. The current economy and more solvent county budget make it more realistic now, he said.

Chavez said he was able to win support from Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti; Garcetti’s challenger in the November election, Steve Cooley; county Supervisor Gloria Molina; and groups such as the Mexican American Bar Assn. and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

“They’re all understanding and they’re all cooperative,” he said. “I’m delighted.”

He stressed that his decision to impanel a second grand jury was not prompted by two legal challenges now before the courts. In those cases, criminal defense attorneys Victor Sherman and Charles Lindner allege that the court’s practice of hand-picking grand jurors has resulted in systematic exclusion of Latinos from the powerful panel since at least the 1970s.

A dual grand jury system was a solution strongly recommended by San Diego State University professor John R. Weeks, who analyzed Los Angeles County’s grand jury statistics for Sherman. Many California counties faced with similar legal challenges--including San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara and Orange--have impaneled a second grand jury to handle criminal matters.