Federal Juror Names No Longer Secret in Western District of Pennsylvania

Judiciary

Federal Juror Names No Longer Secret in Western District of Pennsylvania

Posted Oct 14, 2008, 05:14 pm CST
By Martha Neil

A rule that required the names of federal jurors to be kept secret in the Western District of Pennsylvania has been revoked by the chief judge there.

The move by U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose followed a media protest over a decision by another judge there to keep juror names secret even from the lawyers trying a high-profile public corruption case, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

She said she felt a recent opinion by the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a criminal case involving the former Allegheny County Coroner, Dr. Cyril Wecht, invalidated the rule, the newspaper writes. The court said anonymous juries aren't consistent with American tradition and that knowing who jurors are promotes public confidence in the impartiality of the justice system.

U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab had ordered the jurors to be identified by number in a trial earlier this year of the high-profile Wecht case, which ended with a hung jury. It is expected to be retried before a different judge.

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