Felons May Soon Make the Most Important Decision in California's Justice System
There has been a lot of talk about criminal justice reform over the past year, and it is generally a good thing to help reintegrate non-violent former felons into society and even restore certain rights for those who’ve paid their debt in full.
However, there nevertheless remain a few aspects of society that no former felons, perhaps even non-violent ones, should be allowed anywhere near.
But that sort of logic isn’t exactly common in the far-left coastal state of California, unfortunately, where state legislators are in the process of allowing former convicted felons access to an incredibly important and life-altering aspect of civil society — jury duty.
In a rather scathing Op-Ed for The Orange County Register, local KABC morning radio show host John Phillips excoriated his state’s politicians for the sheer absurdity of allowing former felons to be eligible to sit on a jury and play such an integral role in the justice system — one that they are quite likely very biased against.
Phillips noted that this move was just the latest in a series of measures from California’s predominately Democratic state legislature that appeared aimed at releasing as many inmates as possible from overcrowded prisons and preventing as many people as possible from becoming inmates in the first place.
Those measures have included lowering the bar to qualify for early release, placing inmate-friendly individuals on parole boards, and even decriminalizing a host of formerly criminal behavior — virtually none of which has had a substantial impact on reducing the state’s prison population.
Thus, this latest effort would restore the right and responsibility of jury duty to any and all former felons, whether non-violent or violent, whether still on parole or serving probation.
A ‘jury of your peers’ doesn’t mean having a foreman with the same ankle monitoring device as the defendant. https://t.co/XKUiXayRma
— John Phillips (@Johnnydontlike) June 13, 2019
The bill, known as SB 310, was put forward by Berkeley’s Democratic state Sen. Nancy Skinner and cleared committee by a margin of 5-1 prior to being passed out of the Senate by a vote of 27-10.
“SB310 will help ensure that California juries represent a fair cross-section of our communities … People with felony records have the right to vote in California. There is no legitimate reason why they should be barred from serving on a jury,” Skinner said in a press release about her legislation.
Actually, there is a rather significant and legitimate reason why former felons should be barred from serving jury duty — the strong potential for an inherent bias among such individuals against law enforcement and the judicial system that sentenced them to prison in the past.
Phillips noted how easy it was to imagine how such former felons, serving on a jury, would potentially favor leniency toward the alleged criminals being tried before them, or maintain a bias against officer testimony or the prosecutors trying the case, if not even against the judges overseeing the trials as well.
Consider that even the family members of a law enforcement officer are routinely excused from serving on a jury due to the potential for a level of bias in favor of the police and courts or against alleged criminals.
Would California really have us believe that only one side of that equation — formerly convicted felons versus law enforcement family members — has a propensity for allowing bias and past experiences to potentially shape their current judgment?
Phillips concluded that, in his view, SB 310 was less about restoring certain civil rights to former felons, and more about trying to stack juries to make it that much harder for prosecutors to earn convictions and send more criminals to the already overcrowded prisons.
As previously noted, there is something to be said for restoring the rights and privileges of non-violent former convicted felons that have served their time and are seeking to reintegrate themselves as a law-abiding and productive member of society, such as the right to vote or the right to possess firearms.
That said, the potential for bias and extraordinary conflict of interest that could arise by allowing former felons to sit on juries seems like a bridge too far, even by California’s ludicrous standards.
But given the depths of absurdity to which that state has sunk over the years, it really wouldn’t be a surprise if they proceeded right along with this ridiculous plan.
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