---
created_at: '2016-03-13T16:16:28.000Z'
title: Court Computer Says All Hartford Is Dead (1992)
url: http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/30/nyregion/court-computer-says-all-hartford-is-dead.html
author: adamnemecek
points: 64
story_text: 
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num_comments: 10
story_id: 
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parent_id: 
created_at_i: 1457885788
_tags:
- story
- author_adamnemecek
- story_11278172
objectID: '11278172'

---
**HARTFORD, Sept. 29—** Court officials have figured out why Hartford
residents were excluded from Federal grand jury pools over the past
three years: The computer that selected names thought everyone in the
city was dead.

Federal District Court workers discovered the computer error while
investigating why no Hartford residents had been on lists of prospective
grand jurors.

The city's name had been listed in the wrong place on computer records,
forcing the "d" at the end of "Hartford" into the column used to
describe the status of prospective jurors. "D" stands for dead.

So every time the names of Hartford residents popped up for jury duty,
the computer noted the deaths and declined to send them juror
questionnaires, said Kevin Rowe, chief Federal clerk.

The problem came to light in a lawsuit challenging the racial makeup of
the grand jury that indicted Luis Colon Osario, a defendant in the $7.1
million robbery of a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford in 1983.
