What is 'The Jury Selection and Service Act'?
During the civil rights movement and were are lot of cases in the south where nobody are actually allowed in the juries. There were, and this is a problem not just in the south by the way but they are places where Native Americans were not allowed on juries, there are places where Japanese were not allowed on juries, all kinds of problems. In some areas, women were hardly ever allowed to serve on juries. So in 1968, the government looked around, or some of the leaders in government, and also with alot of pressure from alot of civil rights leaders, they had looked around and said we need to fix this so that there's a uniform standard for how juries are selected and how jurors are qualified. And so they said OK, everybody has to be eighteen years old, anybody who is 18 years old, has lived in the area for a year or more, this was a positive thing not a negative it wasn't to exclude people, it was to include people. It was to include them. If they are not a felon or they have not been accused of a felony and if they can understand English well enough to follow the proceedings of a trial, they have to be allowed to serve on juries. It does not matter what if they are male or female, black or white or yellow, it does not matter if your eyes is blue or brown they're qualified to serve on federal juries.
