Jury Selection in Erie County: Changing a Sexist System

Prior to January 1974, jury selection procedures violating basic standards of randomness had resulted in juries in Erie County, New York, which were overwhelmingly male. This paper describes the biased selection procedures, their discovery by volunteers engaged in a project to ensure a fair trial for prison inmates under indictment for events occurring in the Attica uprising, and the consequences of both improved procedures and an amended law for sexual equality in jury selection. Two linkages between law and society are explored. First, the existence of a "woman's exemption" had led the jury commissioner and staff to make systematic prejudgments about women's behavior which then resulted in their underrepresentation on juries. Second, lawyers and social scientists worked together, using procedures and concepts from both disciplines to achieve a goal of mutual interest: improvement of the methods of jury selection, so that jury composition would more closely resemble the composition of the community. Possibilities and problems of social scientists working with lawyers are described briefly.