Thinking, Language, Intelligence

Question

A California court case (People v. Pierce [40 Cal. Rptr. 2d 254]) raises the issue of how intelligent a person must be to serve as a member of a jury in a criminal trial. Ronald Blaine Pierce was convicted of forcible oral copulation, forcible sodomy, and false imprisonment. His conviction was overturned, however, on the grounds that one of the jurors who convicted him was mildly mentally retarded.

     During the voir dire process the judge asked prospective jurors to state their names, occupations, occupations of their spouses, and whether they had ever served on a jury. The juror in question answered honestly and simply. Subsequently, the judge asked, “Do any of you know any reason at all, perhaps something I haven’t touched on in my voir dire, that would bear upon your qualities to serve as a fair and impartial juror?,” to which no one responded. The defendant’s attorney discovered during the jury’s final instructions that one of the jurors was mildly mentally retarded and filed for a reversal of the conviction.

     A clinical psychologist later testified that the juror in question was a long-term resident of a group home and had an IQ of 66. In the psychologist’s opinion, the juror would have had difficulty processing the information in the trial, due to “her shortened attention span and her inability to process testimony at a normal rate of speech.” It was also revealed, however, that the juror in question worked 20 hours a week in a retail store and had received several promotions and raises during the past two and a half years. The juror was also capable of getting to and from work using public transportation.

     California Code of Civil Procedure, section 203, lists the factors that disqualify potential jurors. These include people who are not U.S. citizens; who do not live in the state or in the jurisdiction in which they are called to serve; who have been convicted of a felony; who are serving as grand jurors; or who are the subject of conservatorship. On these grounds, the judge denied the defendant’s motion for a new trial, noting that none of these exclusions applied to the mentally retarded juror. The California Court of Appeal, however, ruled that the defendant had been denied due process “to a jury whose members are both impartial and mentally competent.” The appellate court ruled that section 203 eliminates certain categories of people, but not all categories of people who may be unfit to serve.

     This case raises several issues regarding the efficacy of the voir dire process, as well as the standards of “competence” and “incompetence” to be used in juror selection.

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