The Policy
For years, U.S. Immigration policies and immigrants have been a touchstone in every political debate. Politicians along with policymakers work hard to ensure that they attract the best foreigners who can add value to the society while maintaining their rights. Immigration policies affect all aspects of society. Regardless of the status of the immigrants, they have always played a central role in the life and growth of the American nation. The constitution grants all legal individuals living in the U.S to be treated equally. One of the factors that distinguished citizens and noncitizens in California is the jury duty. Only citizens are allowed to practice jury duty.
The Assembly Bill 1401 would have given legal immigrants the right to serve on jury duty, which could have made California to be the first state nationwide to pass such a policy (McGreevy & Mason, 2013). According to Section 1 of AB 1401 (2013), the bill “authorizes individuals who are lawfully present immigrants to be eligible as prospective trail jurors, whereas existing law requires prospective jurors to be citizens of the United States”
The California Senate and Assembly voted 25-11 and 48-28 respectively, in favor of the bill (AB 1401, 2013). According to McGreevy and Mason (2013), Assembly Speaker John Pérez pointed out that noncitizens should enjoy this right of citizenship. He added, “It is about making sure that we uphold the standards of our justice system and make sure everybody is afforded a jury of their peers" (“para 6, 2013). AB 1401 would have dropped the lawfully present immigrants from the list of people that are excluded from jury lists that are collected in part from California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) records. Th...
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... Cal, A. B. 1401, Chapter 677, 2013-14. (Cal. Stat. 2013).
Lin, J. (2013). Non-Citizen Jury Proposed In California Bill . The Huffington Post Inc. Reterived from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/26/non-citizen-jury_n_3163523.html
Mass, W. (2013). Calif. Assembly passes bill to allow non-citizens to serve on juries. Shaper Neo Demo. Reterived from http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/15272-calif-assembly-passes-bill-to-allow-non-citizens-to-serve-on-juries
Megerian, C. (2013). Assembly passes bill to let noncitizens serve on juries . LA Times. Reterived from http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/26/local/la-me-immigrants-jury-20130427
McGreevy, P. & Mason, M. (2013). Gov. Jerry Brown vetoes measure allowing noncitizens on juries.Los Angles Times. Referred By: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/07/local/la-me-1008-brown-bills-20131008
Jury duty is the obligation to serve on a jury. There are many reasons for being excused if summoned, here are some: having no public or private transportation or having to exceed 1 ½ hours to travel to the trial (http://www.courti…); if you are under 18 or older than 70 (choose not to serve), or if you are not a US resident with a home in the state (http://www.cga …); if you cannot speak or understand English; or is a constitutional officer, a family support magistrate, a judge, or a member of the general assembly (http://www.cga …). After being selected for jury duty, one is at risk of jury tampering which is a crime where someone attempts to influence the jury via means other than those presented during the trial (http://le...
...laves and women were excluded today every resident of the United States can qualify for citizenship.
There are hundreds of Americans who are selected for jury duty every day. Just like the characters many of them believe jury duty is a major conflict in their lives. They may say they do not have time to participate, which may be true, but the law will make sure you have time. As always, life and time keep going, and nobody wants to miss it. No one prefers to sit in court when they can be doing something productive but it is not going to kill them. Everyone deserves to have a jury hear them and surely they would want that for themselves.
This bill was created to give the right for police officers to stop individuals that might be an immigrant, and ask for documents that state they are a U. S. citizen or legal resident. Which I certainly believe is racial profiling because to identify whether someone is a legal resident or not, someone will need to look at the racial aspect of the person. In fact, this is what is happening: police officers will not be on the lookout for people with a hijab or Japanese; they will be targeting Spanish-speaking individuals. With that said, what did those aliens do wrong? Are these aliens being stopped or arrested because of a law offense or because of the racial aspect?
Despite the efforts of lawyers and judges to eliminate racial discrimination in the courts, does racial bias play a part in today’s jury selection? Positive steps have been taken in past court cases to ensure fair and unbiased juries. Unfortunately, a popular strategy among lawyers is to incorporate racial bias without directing attention to their actions. They are taught to look for the unseen and to notice the unnoticed. The Supreme Court in its precedent setting decision on the case of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986), is the first step to limiting racial discrimination in the court room. The process of selecting jurors begins with prospective jurors being brought into the courtroom, then separating them into smaller groups to be seated in the jury box. The judge and or attorneys ask questions with intent to determine if any juror is biased or cannot deal with the issues fairly. The question process is referred to as voir dire, a French word meaning, “to see to speak”. During voir dire, attorneys have the right to excuse a juror in peremptory challenges. Peremptory challenges are based on the potential juror admitting bias, acquaintanceship with one of the parties, personal knowledge of the facts, or the attorney believing he/she might not be impartial. In the case of Batson v. Kentucky, James Batson, a black man, was indicted for second-degree burglary and receipt of stolen goods. During the selection of the jury the prosecutor used his peremptory challenges to strike out all of the four black potential jurors, leaving an all white jury. Batson’s attorney moved to discharge the venire, the list from which jurors may be selected, on the grounds that the prosecutor’s peremptory challenges violated his client’s Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights to have a jury derived from a “cross-section of the community”(People v. Wheeler, 583 P.3d 748 [Calif. 1978]). The circuit court ruled in favor of the prosecutor and convicted Batson on both counts. This case went through the courts and finalized in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Olson, J. K. (2005, May). Waiver of Juvniles To Criminal Courts. Retrieved September 20, 2011, from Judicial Discretion and Racial Disparity: http://www.cjcj.org/files/waiver_of.pdf
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was established to reduce racial exclusions in America. The key provisions to this legislation was “to have family reunification, to meet the labor needs, and to have a more diverse nation” (Lecture, October 1)
In the United States, jury trials are an important part of our court system. We rely heavily on the jury to decide the fate of the accused. We don’t give a second thought to having a jury trial now, but they were not always the ‘norm’.
Prior to the case of United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the United States implemented a naturalization law known as the Naturalization Act of 1790, in which citizenship would only be granted to “any alien, being a free white person.” And so the prerequisite cases was born, in which any immigrants who wanted to be granted citizenship would have to prove in the court of law that they were indeed “white”. The court would either use scientific evidence or common knowledge to determine if someone was white or not. But not both, due to the In Re Najour case of 1909, in which In Re Najour a dark skin syrian, was granted citizenship after proving that he was indeed “white” in which he won due to scientific evidence. But would of never been granted
Weaver, R. D. (2009). A New Era for Legal Immigrants?: Rethinking Title IV of The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. Journal of Policy Practice , 54-68.
The right to a trial by jury is one of the most fundamental concepts on which the American justice system rests. It had been in the English common law practice for several centuries and the American founders deemed in necessary to continue the practice and draft it into the United States Constitution. Prior to the Sixth Amendment, the Constitution guaranteed trial by jury for all crimes except impeachment. In 1968 the Supreme Court solidified this right in Duncan v. Louisiana stating that juries are a necessary check to g...
Koerner, Brendan. "When Do Judges Sequester Juries?" Slate Magazine. The Slate Group, n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2014.
Stevenson, Bryan A. Illegal Racial Discrimination in Jury Selection. Rep. Montgomery, Alabama: Equal Justice Initiative, 2010. Print.
The United States has found that there is approximately 13 million illegal immigrants residing within its borders and that number is predicted to rise with the years to come. Although there is no definite number; there is a great chance that more than half of these 13 million illegal immigrants drive illegally in the United States. This means that there are more than six million drivers on the roads who are not educated on American traffic laws, who are not registered on the government database, and who have no insurance to cover their accidents. On top of that, if pulled over, law enforcement has the ability to immediately deport these immigrants if they do not provide proper paperwork. It is a known fact that people from all over the world immigrate to the United States in search of the American dream. This is the land of opportunity and no matter how much this country denies it; it needs the labor of illegal immigrants to prosper. In order to create a safer America, illegal immigrants should be allowed to obtain a driver’s license because it forces them to be insured, it stops them from being deported when pulled over, and it assists them in contributing to the prosperity of the United States.
According to LD Online (2015), Public Law 94-142, also known as Education for all Handicapped Children Act (EHA), was passed in 1975. Since then, the law has taken on many changes in order to improve its effectiveness, and is now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004 (IDEA 04). The original Public Law 94-142 guaranteed a free and appropriate public education to each child with a disability from the age 3 to 21 (LD Online, 2015). It is required to make efforts towards improving how children with disabilities are identified and educated, as well as provide evaluations for the success of those efforts. Furthermore, the law provided due process protections