Overview
With more than 1,200 jury trials in Indiana each year, a critical part of each trial is gathering an impartial jury as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The Indiana Supreme Court, the Indiana Jury Committee, Indiana Department of Revenue (DOR) and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) have developed a comprehensive repository of potential jurors for Indiana trial courts in compliance with the full intent of Jury Rule 2.
In the past, potential jurors were called using voter registration lists. Later, voter registration lists were used in combination with some other list. That process still did not include all segments of the over-18 population and in some cases caused a disincentive to vote.
The Indiana Supreme Court, Judicial Center, Jury Committee, Department of Revenue (DOR), and Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) partnered to create a comprehensive, statewide repository of potential jurors for Indiana trial courts that now includes more than 99% of eligible jurors.
Since the list was initially implemented, news publications throughout the state have circulated various positive articles featuring or citing this project. In fall 2006, the Jury Pool project was honored with awards from the American Judicature Society and the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana.
History
In September 2005, the Indiana Supreme Court approved the first statewide jury list of 4,503,032 records, which contained 99.93% of the 18-and-older population according to the 2000 Indiana Census (4,506,089).
The list - first available for use in 2006 - was created from a combination of BMV and DOR records which were merged after duplicates were eliminated. With assistance from Purdue University, Court Technology further filtered the resulting list by removing individuals identified as deceased or underage for jury service and those who had moved out of state. Finally, the list was validated against U.S. Postal Service address data, which standardized the form of addresses, added the county for each address, and flagged addresses that may have delivery errors.
Benefits of the List
The new list is more inclusive of Indiana’s citizens, and has decreased the amount of undeliverable mail. Many courts have noticed a considerable increase in the diversity of jury pools.
Continued Work
To create the annual list, the Indiana Supreme Court and Indiana Jury Committee have once again teamed with the DOR and the BMV.
The team works to make an annual list that is continually more accurate than the original list created in 2005. Each new list more precisely excludes deceased, under-aged, out-of-state, and non-citizen records. Counties that use the INcite JMS list can directly update the data. In 2012, Court Technology created an Excel form for counties that use other jury management programs, which allows them to notify Court Technology of data updates, such as deceased, permanently disabled, name changes, address/changes/wrong address.
A feature added in 2007 is making the lists available electronically over its secure extranet website, INcite (Indiana Court Information Technology Extranet). This allows jury administrators to export the list electronically using any of several file formats for use with their jury management systems or with Microsoft Office products. Court Technology has also developed a jury management system that is available statewide.
Contact Information
For questions about Jury Rule 2, jury administration, and policies, please contact:
Michelle Goodman
317-232-1313
michelle.goodman@courts.in.gov
For questions on how to use the list or other technical questions, please contact:
Jill Russell
317-234-2734
jill.russell@courts.in.gov
*This project is supported by a grant awarded by the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute .