Illegal Immigrants Receiving Jury Duty Notices

Oct 10, 2007 03:23 PM PDT

The call for jury duty is going out to some illegal immigrants, even though the court cannot take them and does not report them.

In Clark County there is a jury pool of hundreds of thousands of people.

Still, it can sometimes be hard to find jurors for a trial.

So court administrators are getting aggressive.

But what they are getting back may be surprising.

Amid all the concern over illegal immigrants, there is at least one job strictly reserved for Americans.

"To be a juror is a duty and privilege of being a US citizen. But occasionally people who are not citizens get called for jury duty", Michael Sommermeyer says.

The courts use Department of Motor Vehicle records. They will even soon use your power bill to build a list of names for jury duty.

And that has summons going to some people who do not even speak the language.

A woman from Panama has been living here illegally for 20 years.

Action News will only identify her as single mom, worried about being deported.

She received a summons and says "my body was shaking. I said oh my God. What's going to happen now? They have my phone number now and my address".

"We don't have time to be reporting people to the immigration authorities. But we do need to make sure we are not seating people who are ineligible to be jurors", Sommermeyer says.

When a resident actually receives a jury summons in the mail, it comes with a list of qualifications.

You must be a US citizen, you cannot be a felon and you have to be a resident of Clark County.

Those qualifications are set down by the law.

Despite that, in an effort to fill seats in the jury box, the Clark County courts sent a summons to one man who is not a US citizen and is a convicted felon.

He got the summons when he was still in prison.

"I was debating on going to trial or taking a plea. And I'm glad I didn't go to trial because I didn't know what kind of jury would be showing up at my trial", he says.

Julia Osborne is an immigration attorney.

She says the practice of inviting illegals to jury duty is bound to cause trouble for both the courts and the illegals who get summoned.

But to get out of serving, an illegal would have to go to court in person and admit to the judge they have no right to be there.

The most surprising fact of all this may be that an alien who does not go to court and tell them they are illegal is facing a lot more trouble than one who dies.

Anyone who is called for jury duty and ignores the summons, is facing fines and other penalties and possible jail time.

http://www.ktnv.com/global/story.asp?s=7196369