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Sunday January 14, 2007


Court tosses grand jury selection suit


By Lauren Keene/Enterprise staff writer

Published Jan 14, 2007 - 20:20:43 CST.



SACRAMENTO — A federal lawsuit challenging the Yolo County court system’s procedures for recruiting and selecting grand jury members was dismissed last week in U.S. District Court.

In a 27-page ruling filed Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr. said attorneys for the lawsuit’s six plaintiffs — including former Yolo County Housing Authority Executive Director David Serena — failed to show that the courts had systematically excluded Hispanics from the panel over a significant period of time.

However, the judge did note that Hispanics have been significantly underrepresented on the grand jury in more recent years, a trend he described as “troubling.”

San Francisco attorney Whitney Leigh, whose law firm represents Serena, said in a phone interview Friday that he is considering his appeal options in the matter.

“Obviously, we were hoping for a different decision, but we were glad the court found that the system in Yolo County is broken, and that if it’s not fixed, it will be subject to a lawsuit within only a few years,” Leigh said.


Deputy Attorney General Hiren Patel, who argued on the court’s behalf last month, could not be reached for comment on the ruling.

In addition to Serena, the suit also named as plaintiffs Carmen Alvarez, Serena’s wife; her daughter Alejandra Hernandez; Manuel Escamilla, Hernandez’s fiance; and two other individuals, Ryan Gomez and Chris Rocha.

Yolo County judges Stephen Mock and Thomas Warriner and Yolo County Jury Commissioner Robyn Weaver were named as defendants.

Filed last summer, the lawsuit contended that Hispanics do not receive equal notice of opportunities to apply for grand jury service in Yolo County or participate in the selection process, a claim the defendants denied.

Shortly after the suit was filed, the defense argued the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue because none had applied for grand jury service in the past. But the court ruled that the plaintiffs also claimed exclusion from the recruitment process — which precedes the application stage — and allowed the suit to continue.



On Dec. 15, the parties appeared in a Sacramento courtroom to argue cross-motions for summary judgment. Both sides submitted expert testimony they said supported their claims regarding grand jury representation by Hispanic citizens.

The plaintiffs’ expert provided figures showing that, from the years 1997 to 2006, Yolo County’s jury-eligible population was about 15.4 percent, although Hispanics accounted for 8.9 percent of the grand jury pool during that period, for a disparity of 6.5 percent.

In the past three years, the expert said, that disparity has grown to show an average disparity of 13.5 percent, including zero representation on the 2004-05 grand jury.

A defense expert, meanwhile, countered that the jury-eligible population was 14 percent Hispanic from 1997 to 2006, and that Hispanics made up 10 percent of the grand jury during those ten years, a four percent disparity.

Damrell wrote in his ruling that, even assuming the plaintiffs’ numbers were correct, the disparity was not enough to demonstrate a systematic exclusion of Hispanics over the past decade.

“A grand jury of 19 (members) drawn from this array on the average would underrepresent Hispanics by a little more than one juror,” Damrell wrote. “This is not substantial underrepresentation.”

However, Damrell did take issue with more recent disparity growth.

“Unaddressed or ignored, this continuing disparity is likely to provide future evidence of systemic underrepresentation of a constitutional dimension,” the judge warned. “However, a three-year period is insufficient to constitute a ‘significant period of time’ for purposes of the equal-protection inquiry.”

Serena, who had been the subject of several critical grand jury reports while serving as the Housing Authority’s executive director, also had claimed violation of his due process rights under the Sixth Amendment because he had been investigated by a racially imbalanced grand jury.

Damrell also denied that claim, noting in his ruling that the Sixth Amendment applies only to criminal proceedings.



Meanwhile, Serena continues to face criminal charges in Yolo Superior Court, where he has pleaded not guilty to 19 charges related to alleged abuse of insurance benefits.