#arizona territory

Jury Duty

Do you know how people are selected for jury duty?  A computer randomly selects names from voter registration rolls and DMV records.  

The process of jury selection was quite different 100+ years ago.  First, someone in the clerk’s office typed or wrote a list of all registered voters in the county. Then, they would use scissors or a paper cutter to cut the list into individual names, fold them up “so as to conceal the name thereon,” and put them all in old rubber band boxes, separated by county.  Then, they “shook the boxes so as to mix the slips containing the names as much as possible.”  The clerk would then calculate how many jurors would be needed and the drawing commenced.

The pictures we are sharing today were taken by Archives Technician Kim.  As she was working on processing court records, she came across these boxes of potential juror names for the counties of Pima and Yuma in the Arizona Territory from 1911.  We are also including the minutes detailing one of the drawings.

Series: Records Relating to Grand and Petit Juries, 1876 - 1911. Record Group 21: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685 - 2009. (National Archives Identifier: 600640).