New Grand Jury’s Ethnic Makeup Draws Criticism

SANTA ANA — The 1997-98 Orange County Grand Jury named Wednesday reverses a two-year trend toward ethnic diversity, drawing immediate fire from critics who have long complained that the panel does not accurately represent the residents of Orange County.

The new panel consists of 18 whites and one Asian American, but no Latinos in a county where estimates of the Latino population range from 26% to 40%.

The new panel differs drastically from the 1996-97 panel, which had a 37% overall minority composition.

When it was named last year, that grand jury drew muted commendations from critics who saw it as an improvement over previous panels that were overwhelmingly white in an increasingly diversified county.

But one persistent critic complained that the new grand jury signals a return to the past.

“It shows the absurdity of the system,” said Art Montez, a civil rights advocate and former president of the Santa Ana branch of the League of United Latin American Citizens, which has filed federal complaints about the composition of past Orange County grand juries. “It is not representative of the people of Orange County.”

Court officials defended the new jury, saying the composition was simply a function of the people who applied, and the luck of the draw.

“We had a good diversity in the [finalist] panel of 30, and some of the alternates are Asian, black and Hispanic,” said Jane Ransome, Orange County Superior Court operations manager. “That’s just the way the draw turned out.”

Of the initial pool of 253 applicants, 87 were selected for a list from which 30 finalists were chosen through interviews. The racial and ethnic make-up of the initial pool was not immediately available. Two of the finalists were listed as black, two as Latino and two as Asian. The other 24 were listed as white, for a total minority representation of 20%.

Of the six members of minority groups, one made it onto the Grand Jury and the other five were named alternates. Those names are drawn randomly from a revolving drum, Ransome said.

The effect of the overall process is exclusion, said James Tippins, president of the Orange County Chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

“It sounds like we’re getting locked out again,” he said. “The composition of the grand jury should reflect the composition of the population, if you’re going to have justice.”

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Unlike grand jury systems in some other states, in which potential jurors are drawn from such lists as voter registration rolls, here Orange County residents apply to become full-time grand jurors. Critics in the past have argued that the system is skewed toward the elderly and the wealthy, those who can afford the time to serve on the yearlong panel at a rate of $25 a day.

Although ages of the 1997-98 jurors range as low as 38, the average age is 60 and only three are younger than 55. Fourteen are listed as retired, two as unemployed and three as working--one as a U.S. Postal Service supervisor, one as chairman and CEO of an unspecified company and one as a controller.

Both Montez and Tippins said they expect LULAC and the NAACP chapter to discuss the composition of the new panel, and probably file letters of complaint.

“We normally file, and [the new complaint] will go along with the rest of the paper trail we’ve left over the last five years,” Montez said. “We’ll file again with the Justice Department and again with the Civil Rights Commission and again the voters of Orange County will pay the price. . . . The cattle yard still smells at the Civic Center. All that has become is one big manure pile.”