As some are aware, a defendant in a criminal trial has a 6th Amendment right to an impartial jury. To effectuate this right, jurors summoned to the courthouse must be called from a cross-section of the community. The SCT, in Duren v. Missouri, established a 3-part test to determine whether jurors called to the courthouse are from a cross-section of the community. The third prong of the test involves systematic exclusion of certain citizens from jury duty.
The Iowa Supreme Court recently examined the test from Duren in State v. Kenneth Lilly. In Lilly, the Iowa Supreme Court, after providing an excellent overview of Duren, determined that
[R]un-of-the-mill jury management practices such as updating the address lists, the granting of excuses, and the enforcement of jury summonses can support a systematic exclusion claim where the evidence shows one or more of those practices have produced under representation of a minority group.
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