From [HERE] A study of capital jury selection in Duval County, Florida has found that the practice of “death qualification disproportionately excluded people of color, and Black people … in particular.” Attorneys for Dennis Glover (pictured, center), who was sentenced to death by a non-unanimous Duval County jury in 2015, commissioned the study. On October 21, 2022, State Attorney Melissa Nelson agreed to resentence Glover to life without parole.

Discriminatory jury selection was just one of several issues presented in Glover’s case. He has consistently maintained his innocence in the murder of his neighbor, Sandra Allen. His attorneys say that school records and IQ tests demonstrate that he is intellectually disabled and therefore should never have been eligible for a death sentence. His 2015 death sentence was imposed after a 10-2 jury recommendation, but it was overturned in 2017 after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida’s sentencing scheme. For five years, State Attorney Melissa Nelson rejected Glover’s requests to waive the death penalty, insisting that she would only do so if he admitted his guilt.

Death qualification refers to the process of removing potential jurors from service in a capital case because of their expressed opposition to the death penalty. To study its effects, Dr. Jacinta M. Gau, a criminal justice professor at the University of Central Florida, examined all 12 capital jury trials conducted in Duval County since 2010 for which jury information was available. She found that the death qualification process removed Black jurors at more than twice the rate of white jurors. 33.8% of Black potential jurors were eliminated by death qualification, along with 38% of other jurors of color, while only 15.5% of white jurors were eliminated.

Gau also found that the jury selection process overall, including death qualification and peremptory strikes, was particularly discriminatory against Black women. She wrote, “fully two thirds of Black women otherwise eligible, qualified, and willing to serve were excluded by the combination of death qualification and prosecutor peremptory strikes, as were 55% of Black men.”

Gau’s results are consistent with a recent study of death qualification in North Carolina. Researchers from Michigan State University studied jury selection in Wake County (Raleigh) from 2008 to 2019. The researchers found statistically significant evidence of racial disparities in death qualification, with Black potential jurors removed “at 2.16 times the rate of their white counterparts.” That research was submitted as part of a challenge to death qualification on behalf of Brandon Xavier Hill, who is facing capital charges in Wake County.