one in three chance of being incarcerated<\/a>. Given these distressing numbers, Black men appear to have a higher risk of being knocked out of juror pools, Harris said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cWhen you couple racist policies and practices with socio-economics, the share of Black men available for jury selection is further diminished and since people must take time off work to serve on juries, only people who can afford to miss a paycheck, people with paid time off or flexible work arrangements can afford to serve on a jury,\u201d Harris said. \u201cKeep in mind that trials for serious crimes are lengthy; a recent murder trial that I was a part of lasted one month. How many of us can afford to skip a month\u2019s pay?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While a judge is not required to exempt someone from jury duty because the person can\u2019t afford to go without a paycheck, defense attorneys are ill-served by forcing a person to miss pay to be their juror, Harris added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The right to a jury trial is a hallmark of the American criminal justice system and defendants generally have the right to be tried by a jury of their peers, said Waukeshia Jackson, founder of the Atlanta-based Jackson & Lowe Law Group. In explaining the meaning of having \u201ca jury of your peers,\u201d Jackson said defendants aren\u2019t entitled to a jury containing members of their own race, gender, age, or sexual orientation. Most accurately, \u201cjury of your peers\u201d means \u201cjury of fellow citizens,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNonetheless, widespread discrimination remains in the jury selection process,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While courts don\u2019t have to ensure that a defendant\u2019s race, gender, age, or sexual orientation is represented in a jury pool, the Supreme Court has long held courts may not remove a potential juror solely based on these factors, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor more than a century, racial minorities have been protected from jury discrimination in theory but in practice, these laws have little actual protection and one critical factor that impacts African-American eligibility to participate in jury pool is the felon jury exclusion rule,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Throughout the country, African-Americans are overrepresented in felony convictions and therefore more likely to be excluded from jury pools because individuals cannot serve as a juror if they\u2019ve been convicted of a felony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe felony jury exclusion rule dramatically reduces the number of African-Americans eligible for jury selection because roughly, one-third of the adult African-American male population has been convicted of a felony and, in many jurisdictions, these citizens are forever barred from serving on a jury,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cRace has a tremendous impact in criminal trials, at least one African-American juror can help even the playing field when it comes to verdicts. Race matters in the courtroom and race relates to perception and judgment \u2013 especially when a case is about race.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The landmark 1986 case of Batson v. Kentucky established that lawyers aren\u2019t permitted to engage in systematic exercise of peremptory challenges of prospective jurors based solely upon such suspect criteria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHowever, if the attorney \u2013 whether it be prosecutor of defense attorney \u2013 can establish an age, race, ethnicity, or gender-neutral reason for the use of the peremptory challenge, the court will permit it,\u201d said Western Michigan University Cooley Law School professor and former Miami-Dade judge, Jeff Swartz. \u201cThe jury pool should be made of such a representative cross-section in the same proportion as found in the community. Does this mean that on many occasions that a Black defendant may end up with an all-white jury? Yes, it does.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jackson added that those who are not African-American haven\u2019t experienced the racial discrimination and verbal abuse that are far too common for members of the Black community. Jurors from all-white jury pools convict African-American defendants significantly more often than white defendants and this gap in conviction rate is entirely eliminated when the jury pool includes at least one African-American member, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe makeup of a jury can mean the difference between a conviction and an acquittal,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If accused of a crime, American justice supposedly guarantees the right to a trial in front of a \u201cjury of your peers.\u201d However noble the idea might be in theory, many legal experts acknowledge that, due to systemic racism, having a jury of your peers is often just an illusion. For African-Americans, systemic racism in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[98,1656,1657],"class_list":["post-2637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","tag-african-americans","tag-darlene-harris","tag-systemic-racism","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2638,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637\/revisions\/2638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}