Jury Selection

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT WESTERN DISTRICT OF OKLAHOMA

Notice Regarding Juror Selection – 28 U.S.C. § 1864(a)

Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1861, litigants “have the right to grand and petit juries selected at random from a fair cross section of the community.” The Court uses a two-step process to select jurors. First, a master jury wheel is created by selecting names at random from the registered voter lists of the counties in the four different divisions of the district. Then, names are randomly drawn periodically from the master jury wheel to receive juror qualification questionnaires. Individuals’ answers to these questionnaires determine whether they are legally qualified to serve. If so, the names of those persons are put on a second wheel, a qualified jury wheel. As prospective jurors are needed for a specific trial or grand jury, juror summonses are sent to persons randomly selected from the qualified wheel. All of these selections are carried out through a properly programmed electronic data processing system for pure randomized selection. The pure randomized process ensures that the mathematical odds of any single name being picked are substantially equal.