You must not know much about public defenders offices, in general they are under funded, and undermanned, and it isn't like there is anyone monitoring the jury composition of every case in the state at any given time.
The problem is compounded by youth being the number one group of people who naturally aren't called for jury duty. You have to be registered to vote, or have a drivers lisc. to even be in the pot to be selected as a possible.
Young people tend to move around a lot more than other segments of the population, so even if they are called, they may no longer be reachable at the address the state has for them, or they have moved out of state entirely and are no longer eligible to be seated.
Many youth, don't have access to reliable transportation to get them to a courthouse even if they are on one of the two list mentioned above.
They are also in one of the largest groups of people, who just flat out refuse to show up.
You also can't be a felon, you have to be literate, and able to read/write/speak English (This is in Louisiana law.) and considering that Louisiana has roughly a 25% youth illiteracy rate.
So it isn't really difficult to see, how this could be overlooked.
And honestly, there isn't a chance in hell that a defense attorney noticed this, and more likely one of the many justice reform groups in Louisiana that found this, or received a tip about the issue.
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It took defense attorneys years to figure this out?
You must not know much about public defenders offices, in general they are under funded, and undermanned, and it isn't like there is anyone monitoring the jury composition of every case in the state at any given time.
The problem is compounded by youth being the number one group of people who naturally aren't called for jury duty. You have to be registered to vote, or have a drivers lisc. to even be in the pot to be selected as a possible.
Young people tend to move around a lot more than other segments of the population, so even if they are called, they may no longer be reachable at the address the state has for them, or they have moved out of state entirely and are no longer eligible to be seated.
Many youth, don't have access to reliable transportation to get them to a courthouse even if they are on one of the two list mentioned above.
They are also in one of the largest groups of people, who just flat out refuse to show up.
You also can't be a felon, you have to be literate, and able to read/write/speak English (This is in Louisiana law.) and considering that Louisiana has roughly a 25% youth illiteracy rate.
So it isn't really difficult to see, how this could be overlooked.
And honestly, there isn't a chance in hell that a defense attorney noticed this, and more likely one of the many justice reform groups in Louisiana that found this, or received a tip about the issue.