Where are all the Black Jurors?
/- "No one can
be expected to perceive himself to be a full participant in our society
as a whole, when he is told by a representative of the government that,
because of his race, he is too stupid or too biased to serve on a
particular jury." -Justice Thurgood Marshall.
There are only a few
ways that Americans can meaningfully exercise their citizenship;
enlisting in the military, running for national office, voting and
serving on a jury. Jury service is a basic right of citizenship . With
the exception of voting, "for most citizens the honor and privilege of
jury duty is their most significant opportunity to participate in the
democratic process." Whether "jury service be deemed a
right, a privilege, or a duty, the State may no more extend it to some
of its citizens and deny it to others on racial grounds than it may
invidiously discriminate in the offering and withholding of the
elective franchise." A
peremptory challenge is a method of removing jurors from a jury pool.
A juror may be removed for any reason; so long as it is a race or
gender "neutral" reason. MANY Black
jurors are excluded by challenges that are disguised as race neutral
but in fact are pretext or surrogates for race. The following explanations for
striking African Americans were found to be race neutral (removing the Black juror) in various State and Federal courts:
- style of
dress and demeanor(1),
- participation in church activities (2) ,
- lack of
education (3) ,
- unemployment and wearing a beard (4)
- residence in a high
crime neighborhood and unemployment (5) ,
- residence in same neighborhood as
defendant (6),
- lack of education and business experience (7),
- being young or
being a social worker (8) ,
- membership in Operation PUSH (9) ,
- membership in
the NAACP (10),
- affiliation with Alabama State University(11) ,
- having a
relative that was a felon (12) ,
- having a criminal record,poor body
language, eye contact, having incarcerated relative (13) ,
- being a social
worker and agreeing with the O.J. Simpson verdict (14) ,
- having low intelligence or marginal literacy(15) ,
- being unemployed, 22 years old and
wearing an earring (16),
- living in same the neighborhood as defendant and exhibited a lack of intellectual capacity (17) . [MORE]
