Opinion
21S-MS-419
09-10-2021
In the Matter of the Approval of the Annual Master List for Jury Pool Assembly
ORDER APPROVING THE 2022 MASTER LIST FOR JURY POOL ASSEMBLY
Loretta H. Rush Chief Justice.
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, and non-citizens. The list is then divided into individual county lists.
IT IS, THEREFORE, ORDERED that:
1. The 2022 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, and 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 1st of each year. The CAO shall advise the Supreme Court of the completion of the annual Master List.
3. The Jury Pool Master List project team has worked very closely with the BMV to obtain the necessary data for creation of the master 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.