I was watching a show where they were discussing jury selection process going on in the Michael Jackson case. Some people were saying that there is a good chance there will be no African-Americans on the Jackson’s jury, and how that might have an effect on the trial. While I don’t buy that argument in this case, I think the racial makeup of a jury could hurt, or help and a defendant depending on the circumstances.
This link expresses the belief that racial makeup typically doesn’t have an effect. I find this very hard to believe, due to the fact that race has a substantial effect in every other part of the judicial system. Yet, most of the experts I hear on TV seem to think otherwise.
This link discusses a study that comes to the opposite conclusion and includes the following passage:
*Jack McMahon, for example, was an Assistant District Attorney for many years in Philadelphia. During his recent campaign for the District Attorney’s position, it was revealed that he carefully instructed new prosecutors in his office on the importance of keeping many blacks off high level criminal cases. His training video for prosecutors stated that “young black women are very bad” on the jury for a prosecutor, and that "blacks from low-income areas are less likely to convict."36
If a new prosecutor did not follow his directives, he or she faced dismissal: "And if you go in there and any one of you think you’re going to be some noble civil libertarian and try to get jurors [who say they’ll be fair], that’s ridiculous. You’ll lose and you’ll be out of the office; . . . ."37
His tape urged his fellow prosecutors to pick juries that they knew would be unfair: **"[T]he only way you’re going to do your best is to get jurors that are as unfair and more likely to convict than anybody else in that room."**38
Mr. McMahon, himself, prosecuted 36 murder cases and some of those defendants are presently on death row in Pennsylvania. In selecting juries, McMahon practiced what he preached. In a review of 16 first-degree murder cases prosecuted by McMahon, black jurors were struck four times as often as other jurors, and black women jurors were struck six times as often as non-African-American males.39
But McMahon was certainly not alone in this practice of racial discrimination in jury selection. Statistics from the race study in Philadelphia discussed above showed that from 1983 to 1993 prosecutors struck 52% of all black potential jurors, but only 23% of other potential jurors.*
(and)
In another jurisdiction, prosecutors followed McMahon’s strategy precisely. Their spurious reasons for excluding black jurors were exposed by the Florida Supreme Court in reviewing the death penalty conviction of Robert Roundtree. At trial, the judge simply accepted the state’s explanations at face value as the prosecutor eliminated ten black jurors from the jury pool. The first two black jurors were dismissed because they were “inappropriately dressed” and one had on “pointy New York shoes.” At the same time, a similarly dressed white juror was accepted. Another black juror was rejected because she was thirty years old and unemployed, but a white unemployed female was accepted. Three blacks were excused, in part, because they were single, but five white single jurors were accepted. And the reason given for striking another black woman was that the state preferred a predominantly male jury, although the state had accepted 13 white females, 6 of whom sat on the final jury. The reviewing court found that “the proffered reasons were a pretext for racial discrimination” and reversed the conviction
While I’m not surprised by this in the least, I do wonder if the racial discrimination really has the effect those prosecutors believe it will. Will the racial makeup of a jury effect the outcome in any appreciable way?
Also, if the goal of jury selection is to stack the deck in your favor, doesn’t that subvert the justice system more than it weeds out people with biases? If so, how can this be fixed?