Plan for anonymous jurors is bad idea

What's next?

Perhaps jurors will be hidden behind a one-way mirror. Maybe they'll hear evidence via closed-circuit television or an online stream and render their verdicts by e-mail.

An advisory committee to the Virginia Supreme Court has proposed making jurors anonymous in all criminal jury trials. The jurors would be referred to by numbers instead of names.

Defense lawyers, consultants and defendants would learn juror identities unless the judge finds cause to keep them confidential.

Apparently, the committee believes blanket anonymity avoids an implication to jurors that their identity has been kept secret in a particular case because the defendant is dangerous.

This proposal is dangerous.

"The very notion that they're thinking of doing this turns our notion of justice on its head," said Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia.

"We should start with the idea that fairness in the justice system is based on openness and accountability."

Instead, we have an overreaction or an overreach. There's no evidence that a defendant has ever harmed a juror in Virginia.

In 2008, the General Assembly passed a law allowing judges to limit the disclosure of information about jurors in cases where "good cause" has been established. Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William, introduced that bill after judges in his home county expressed concern about attempts to intimidate jurors in some cases involving gang members.

But next thing you know, judges in Virginia Beach began automatically sealing the names of jurors.

This is what we call a slippery slope.

"First of all, there's no significant trend toward jurors being threatened that would have justified this in first place," Willis said. "Even so, the first action should not be to make jurors anonymous, but to figure out ways to make jurors safe without them being anonymous."

Judges should have that discretion to protect the identity of jurors facing undue pressure or threats, said University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias. "But as a general matter, it does not seem like a good idea."

Well, not if you want to police the system. "You want to have the possibility of finding out if there was something that happened in the jury decision that was inappropriate," Tobias said.

And then there are places like Powhatan County, where Circuit Judge Thomas V. Warren, according to a court clerk, ordered the clerk to keep the names of jurors from the media after verdicts were rendered in the slaying of Tahliek Taliaferro.

What's the point? In a county of 27,000 residents that had just experienced its own trial of the century, the jury's composition was far from a mystery.

Once again, we're sacrificing reason and long-held principles at the altar of fear.

"Jurors serve an essential purpose, but they need to be as accountable as anyone else in the judicial system," said Willis, who argues anonymity should be done "on a highly individualized basis that serves justice."

"Critiquing the system, being able to evaluate a trial at every turn, is a key component of fairness in the justice system," he said. "And when jurors are anonymous, they cannot be held accountable."

We're a nation of laws, not star chambers. Justice cannot flourish beneath a shroud of secrecy.

Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or .