Indiana Cases October 14, 2022: In re Annual Master List for Jury Pool Assembly

Case Description

1

ORDER APPROVING THE 2023 MASTER LIST FOR JURY POOL ASSEMBLY

Loretta H. Rush, Chief Justice of Indiana

The Jury Committee and Court Technology are required to oversee the creation of the Master List for Jury Pool Assembly ("Master List") by order of this Court (Case No. 94S00-0501-MS-19). To create the Master List, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles provided current customer files and the Department of Revenue provided current taxpayer records directly to Court Technology. Project staff at Court Technology (1) merged these sources and removed identifiable duplicate information through social security number or name matching; (2) corrected obvious data entry errors; and (3) removed individuals identified as deceased, underage, non-residents, or non-citizens. The list is then divided into individual county lists.

IT IS, THEREFORE, ORDERED that:

1. The 2023 Master List is approved for use by trial courts as the source from which to compile their jury pool. Counties may, as an alternative, compile their jury pool from the voter registration lists for a county, supplemented with at least one of the following sources: property tax records, telephone directories, or utility customer lists.

2. The Jury Committee and Court Technology shall use this process annually and certify the Master List to the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) of the Indiana Supreme Court, Office of Judicial Administration, on or about September 1 of each year. The CAO shall advise the Supreme Court of the completion of the annual Master List.

3. The Master List project team has worked very closely with the BMV to obtain the necessary data for creation of the list. In the past, some courts have obtained data for their jury pools directly from the BMV. This practice has been discontinued; courts are to use the Master List created by this project, not contact the BMV directly.