The New Jersey State Bar Association (NJSBA) argued in legal papers that jury selection in an ongoing criminal trial in Bergen County raised constitutional concerns and should be scrapped to allow for a more transparent jury selection process that preserves the defendant's right to participate in the process. The NJSBA made the arguments in a brief seeking to be permitted as an amicus party in State v. Dangcil, the first criminal jury trial to be held since the Judiciary shut them down in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The NJSBA said in its brief that the jury selection process used in the case wasn't appropriate because the county's jury management office exercised "unfettered and unrecorded discretion" in excusing some people from jury service. Further, it did not keep records about dismissed jurors, nor did it collect demographic data of potential jurors, meaning the defendant and attorneys on both sides could not participate fully in jury selection and a representative jury may not have been selected.

"The NJSBA understands the importance of resuming jury trials after months of their suspension during COVID-19. But the pandemic does not excuse the requirement that a jury be constituted through a process that is thorough, fair and equitable, and that gives assurance to the defendant and the public that trials are adjudicated by juries drawn from pools that are sufficiently representative of the community. For the reasons described above, the selection process used for defendant's trial, which allowed the Jury Management Office to exercise unilateral discretion to excuse jurors for scheduling conflicts, fails to accomplish, and even undermines these goals. Amicus NJSBA therefore requests that this Court invalidate the process utilized here and allow the defendant a trial at which requests for excuses, as part of the voir dire process, occur on the record and in the presence of counsel," states the brief, written by Lawrence S. Lustberg, director of the Gibbons Fellowship program, and Michael R. Noveck, associate and Gibbons Fellow at Gibbons, P.C.