In Dodge City, an attorney reportedly is considering using the lack of Hispanic jurors as grounds for appealing the aggravated battery conviction of her Hispanic client.

According to an Associated Press story in Wednesday’s Journal-World, the attorney said the fact that her client was convicted by an all-white jury was an issue because, “Different sectors of our community have different traditions, different ways of doing things.”

One presumes that aggravated battery has the same definition regardless of the suspect’s ethnic background, and surely such an assault is no more acceptable in one culture than another. But the principle of people being judged by a jury of their peers is an important one in America’s democratic system. The problem, according to officials in some areas of southwest Kansas, is that it’s difficult to attract enough Hispanics to jury duty to accurately reflect the population.

In Ford County, where Dodge City is, the population is 38 percent Hispanic, according to the 2000 census, but many of those people aren’t eligible to serve on juries because they aren’t U.S. citizens. Those who are citizens and whose names show up on voter or driver’s license rolls may be called for jury duty but don’t show up. That, according to some observers, is because they don’t trust the U.S. legal system.

The same probably could be said of at least some people from about any cultural group in the United States, but the way to address that distrust isn’t to avoid participating in the system. Regardless of their cultural background, U.S. citizens have agreed to live under a common government, a common set of laws. The ability of that government to apply laws fairly across culturally diverse segments of the population depends on the participation of citizens representing those cultures — black, white, Asian, Hispanic, male, female.

Perhaps there are ways for communities and government organizations to ease the feeling of alienation some cultural groups harbor, but individuals also have some responsibility. Even those who have come here to work but not to become citizens have agreed to live under American law. Those who are citizens — either by birth or naturalization — have agreed to embrace the American system of government and call it their own. Although the government has a responsibility to take reasonable action to ensure that juries reflect the population, it is not inherently the government’s fault if citizens from a defendant’s cultural group have chosen not to participate in the legal system by serving on a jury.

One of the strengths of U.S. democracy is that it depends on the participation of citizens. It’s a wonderful system, but it comes with a responsibility that all citizens — regardless of income level, gender, ethnic backgroud or other factors — must take seriously.