Private: Racial Discrimination Persists in Jury Selection, Equal Justice Initiative Leader Writes

by Nicole Flatow

Racial discrimination in the selection of juries remains a significant problem 25 years after a  Supreme Court decision outlawed juror exclusion on the basis of race, writes Equal Justice Initiative Director Bryan Stevenson for Human Rights, a magazine of the American Bar Association.

Following the Supreme Court’s 1986 decision in Batson v. Kentucky, prosecutors must provide a nonracial reason for opting to exclude particular jurors from trial. But prosecutors have become creative in developing seemingly race-neutral explanations that are motivated by race, some of which could easily be rooted out by judges, Stevenson explains:

African Americans have been excluded because they appeared to have “low intelligence”; wore eyeglasses; were single, married, or separated; or were too old for jury service at age forty-three or too young at twenty-eight. They have been barred for having relatives who attended historically black colleges; for chewing gum; and, frequently, for living in predominantly black neighborhoods.

In a South Carolina case, the prosecutor said he struck a black potential juror because he “shucked and jived” as he walked. These “race-neutral” explanations and the tolerance of racial bias by court officials have made jury selection for people of color a hazardous venture, where the sting of exclusion often is accompanied by painful insults and injurious commentary.

Stevenson points out that in the wake of Batson, many offices went so far as to train prosecutors on how to mask their exclusion of minorities from juries.

All of this has resulted in continued underrepresentation of minorities on juries. Stevenson suggests that courts, bar associations, legislatures and community groups all have a role to play in holding prosecutors accountable. Read the full article here.

[Image courtesy of Ken Lund.]

Civil rights, Constitutional Interpretation, Criminal Justice, Equality and Liberty, Racial Justice, Supreme Court