State Legislature Working To Allow Non-Citizens To Serve On Jury

[LAPhil]

Originally Posted by ilbegone

It's both a big problem and a can of worms, Phil.

The countries many of those people come from are corrupt and lacking in democratic values, even whole different thought processes are involved.

Are you willing to have a jury comprised of newly arrived people from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Saharan African countries sit in judgement of the surviving Boston bombing suspect, a legal immigrant from Chechnya?

How about cases in which the Mexican government has an interest in, want a bunch of Mexican nationals weighing in on the outcome?

Juries are selected from voter registration lists, so when they can sit on juries, the slippery slope will be why "not let them vote as well?"

So the value of American citizenship is diminished with every tiny little bite.

The people who come up with this crap hate our country and are seeking to change it into something else by turning us into "citizens of the world".

Think about it.

Ilbegone, as the lawyers would say, you're assuming a lot of facts not in evidence. If there were a case of jurors who were "planted" or jurors who were biased or had malevolent intentions because of their nationality or religion that would theoretically come out during the voir dire and they would be disqualified, even if the attorneys had the slightest suspicion that that was the case. Any potential juror can be disqualified at the discretion of the attorneys. You're looking for a worst case scenario here, whereas in the vast majority of cases having a legal resident on a jury would not constitute any problem as long as that juror was not found to have any significant biases. And as for the voter registration rolls, if non-citizens can't vote I don't know how they could be selected anyway.