An en banc panel opinion of a federal appeals court has abandoned the exclusive use of a statistical test in analyzing whether a jury pool adequately represents a “fair cross-section” of the community.
In a Wednesday decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the conviction of Salvador Hernandez-Estrada, who had challenged the constitutionality of the jury selection process used in the Southern District of California. But the panel, which took up the case at the request of Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, reversed its own 2005 precedent in concluding that the “absolute disparity test” is inappropriate in determining the fairness of a jury pool.
