Since U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall recognized the immeasurable “varieties of the human experience” diverse juries bring to the jury room in Peters v. Kiff 407 U.S. 493 (1972), federal courts have sought to ensure diversity in the jury selection process. With his recent April 4 General Order (No. 19-06), the Honorable Rodney Gilstrap, Chief United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, advances this goal by seeking to expand the jury pools in the Eastern District of Texas to include persons selected from lists of licensed drivers from all counties with each division of the district.

Judge Gilstrap’s order amends the plan for the random selection of Jurors pursuant to the Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968 means the names of all potential petit jurors in the Eastern District of Texas will be selected from a master jury wheel using the names selected at random from both the voter registration lists and the licensed drivers lists. Many practitioners, judges and scholars alike recognize that drawing potential jurors from other sources beyond voter registration rolls like driver license databases likely taps into a greater, more diverse cross-section of the population, leading to diverse juries with a variety of perspectives and a tendency to avoid groupthink.