about their ability to influence political decisions and thus increase their willingness to participate in politics even after the end of their jury service. Racial and other minorities may also benefit from having greater representation among jurors than among judges. In jurisdictions that do not have any statutory provisions formally allowing jury sentencing, judges have sometimes consulted with the jury on sentencing anyway. At the federal level, the practice of polling the jury and using their input in sentencing was upheld on appeal by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Sentencing is said to be more time-consuming for jurors than the relatively easy task of ascertaining guilt or innocence, which means an increase in jury fees and in the amount of productivity lost to jury duty. In New South Wales, a 2007 proposal by Chief Justice Jim Spigelman to involve juries in sentencing was rejected after District Court Chief Judge Reg Blanch cited "an expected wide difference of views between jurors about questions relating to sentence". Concerns about jury tampering through intimidation by defendants were also raised. Germany and many other continental European countries have a system in which professional judges and lay judges deliberate together at both the trial and sentencing stages; such systems have been praised as a superior alternative because the mixed court dispenses with most of the time‐consuming practices of jury control that characterize Anglo‐American trial procedure, yet serves the purposes of a jury trial better than plea bargaining and bench trials, which have displaced the jury from routine American practice. Notable jury sentences Civil rights leader James Bevel was sentenced to 15 years in prison pursuant to the recommendation of a Virginia jury that found him guilty of having sex with his teenage daughter in the 1990s when they lived in Leesburg. The sentencing range had been 5 to 20 years. After James Alex Fields Jr. was convicted of first-degree murder for the Charlottesville car attack, the jury recommended a sentence of life plus 419 years. Jury selection Jurors are selected from a jury pool formed for a specified period of time—usually from one day to two weeks—from lists of citizens living in the jurisdiction of the court. The lists may be electoral rolls (i.e., a list of registered voters in the locale), people who have driver's licenses or other relevant data bases. When selected, being a member of a jury pool is, in