Jury Selection in Willard Robocall Trial Favors Russ Olson's Wentworth Neighbors

A group of randomly selected Lake County citizens will troop to the courthouse tomorrow to see if they win a seat on the jury for Daniel Willard's robocall trial, which will treat them to lengthy discourses on South Dakota campaign finance law, the First Amendment, and the conflicts therebetween.

Oh, wait, did I say randomly?

As I understand the process, the state and Willard both get to strike three jurors. That means the first 18 names on the jury list are probably all the further down we need to go to see who's likely to hear the case.

This case is happening in Lake County because resigning Senator Russell Olson is claiming the harm (remember, Olson, calls it terrorism) from Willard's robocalls. Olson lives in the Wentworth ZIP, 57075, as do 892 other Lake County residents. Wentworth/57075 makes up 7.97% of Lake County's 11,200-person population (I'm using 2010 Census data). Those percentages would shift a bit if we were talking just legal adults eligible for jury duty, but let's roll with what we have.

Given those numbers, one would expect a list of 18 people randomly drawn from Lake County to include maybe one or two of Russ's Wentworth neighbors. Do some math, and you discover that there's a 95% chance that an 18-person random sample of Lake County residents should include no more than three Wentworthers.

The first 18 names on the Willard trial jury list include nine people from Wentworth.

Run this experiment one million times, and you should get that many 57075 residents in your jury pool three times.

In an infinite universe, anything can happen. In Lake County, anything includes a jury pool with a highly unlikely geographical bias toward the influential aggrieved party.

Tangentially Related Judicial Trivia: Did you know that it is a Class 2 misdemeanor to ask the sheriff or deputy sheriff to place yourself or anyone else on a jury? See SDCL 16-13-44. Lawyer friends, can you explain to me where that statute came from? And has anyone ever been prosecuted under it?

Tea Party Rejects Judicial Activism, Expansion of Federal Power in Gun Ruling

...right? Right?!?

The Tea Party seems awfully quiet lately. BP turns the Gulf of Mexico in an oil holding pond, and the Tea Party has nothing to offer as citizens' anger rises at government for not doing enough.

Maybe the Tea Party can get back in the headlines by attacking the judicial activism and federalization of power in yesterday's McDonald v. City of Chicago gun rights ruling. Five men in Washington stripped power from your local and state governments and gave more power to the federal judiciary. Those five conservatives also engaged in the very sort of judicial activism that Republicans allegedly loathe as they look for a reason to quash Elana Kagan's nomination. Justices Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy have grafted a new individual right, self-defense against common crime, onto a Second Amendment predicated entirely on the principle of common defense against invaders and possibly an illegitimate government. (McDonald v. Chicago can't be about the "well-regulated Militia"—how can a ruling that only extends pistol rights as far as your front door help you play Red Dawn*?)

If I understand the Tea Party—if there is any Tea Party philosophy to understand—McDonald v. Chicago represents everything these angry conservatives hate: a power-hungry federal government violating the Founders' intent to expand its dominance over our duly elected local officials. But the Tea Party won't go there, because they are not a party of principle. They aren't even a party. They're just a writhing mass of inchoate rage with no coherent plan for practical governance.

But maybe deep down the Tea Partiers really do want anarchy. Ugh.
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*Oh my: there's a remake coming. Get you pistols ready for Chinese paratroopers!

Chief Justice Miller: DM&E Eminent Domain Law Flawed

Dang: I guess we didn't need that push to refer SB 174 to a public vote. All we needed was one judge, Chief Justice Miller, to smell unconstitutionality in it. KELO reports that Justice Miller, the hearing officer in DM&E's request to use eminent domain for its coal train project, says he doesn't intend to "fully or blindly comply with or enforce the 90-day limitation" imposed by the new law because he considers it unconstitutional.

So does that count as judicial activism? And are landowners o.k. with that? That's something Sibby and I will have to think about....