baddog

Despite their overall rarity in American history, “nameless juries have progressed from a judicial fluke to a well-established departure from ordinary procedure, and a measure which some authorities argue seriously should be ordinary procedure.”[5] Today, every federal judicial circuit, excluding the 10th Circuit, has approved of the use of anonymous juries.[6] This past summer, for instance, a federal judge in Brooklyn ordered the empanelment of an anonymous jury in the criminal trial of an al Qaeda terrorist who threatened to kill prosecutors and court staff.[7] More troubling is the practice of trial courts in Los Angeles County of withholding juror names in the majority of criminal cases.[8] Even in situations where courts decide to disclose the identities of jurors to the parties, they may refuse to disclose such information to members of the news media.[9]