I don’t know that you can point to anything that black people were forbidden from in Jim Crow days as specific proof of anything. They were forbidden from all sorts of stuff, from important like jury service, to trivial, like certain water fountains.
I’d bet jury service was one more thing they were forbidden from as a matter of course, not specifically because of the impact of black jurors.
I think it was a valid observation and wasn’t intended as an insult. The fact that juries have at times returned verdicts reflecting egregious injustices, and that those injustices have frequently been racially motivated and both unjust convictions and unjust acquittals have fallen along racial lines, is a pretty good refutation of the assertion that the jury selection process is “good enough”.
I don’t know what can be done about it except trying to ensure that juries are racially and economically reflective of the local community and carefully vetting of potential jurors for bias.
I think part of the reason that OJ Simpson was acquitted, in addition to sloppy police work, was that lead prosecutor Marcia Clark was by many accounts incompetent and certainly no match for Simpson’s elite legal team. Simpson ended up with a jury that was clearly favourably disposed towards him, most remarkably seen in how quickly they reached a verdict in a very complicated case.
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What do people expect, when assistant DA positions typically pay beans compared to what a middling lawyer can make on their own? A bit of Googling says $108k on average for an assistant DA in Los Angeles County. That’s chump change- a high-powered corporate attorney can make 2-3 times that as an associate.
They most likely get two sorts of lawyers- the true believers who want to uphold the law, etc… and the people who didn’t have other options besides the DA’s office. Meanwhile anyone motivated by money who can work elsewhere for more, does so.
Which is what peremptory jury challenges are intended to be for; to craft a jury that’s impartial, and part of that is letting both sides’ counsel have a hand in it, so there aren’t any claims that neither side had their say.
Of course, the system assumes that the legal representation and counsel of both sides is in parity; it’s not really geared to accommodate dramatic differences in skill and competence in that regard. It’s also not geared to accommodate when either side has an agenda outside of achieving justice, and that’s IMO, the root cause of a lot of the problems we see.
But that doesn’t work if the goal is minority representation on the jury. If it’s gender parity you’re looking for, say, and one side strikes three women, the other side can strike three men and retain parity. But if there are only three black people in the pool, and one side strikes all three of them, the other side can’t fix that with strikes.
True, but at the moment, there aren’t any requirements that minority representation be required, and I’m not sure that minority representation is the prime factor in an impartial jury at any rate.
But that’s the question I’m asking in the thread. How required is it? Should there be a requirement that juries mirror the populace of the political division that the court has jurisdiction over? Is that more important than peremptory juror challenges for other more focused reasons? And to extend the concept, how does that apply in other realms? Should political representation / workplace makeup / etc. be required as well for minorities, be they racial, sexual, political, or whatever?
And ultimately what constitutes representation?
I mean, we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this. I will say that, without any data other than anecdotal experience, I think most non-lawyers would agree with you and most lawyers would agree with me.