Having a child “out of wedlock” was enough to remove a black juror from a 1998 Mississippi murder trial involving a black American and a white victim. Since then, nothing much has changed in the old south, a recent study said.
When it was all over, Alvin Robinson was found guilty by a jury of 10 whites and two blacks and sentenced to 20 years behind bars for a murder he claimed was in self defense.
Two years later, an appeals court annulled the verdict, arguing that prosecutors used seven of 10 allowed peremptory strikes on prospective jurors who were black.
One of the candidates stared too long at a prosecutor another had failed to mention she was divorced and yet a third was declared an outsider after living in the same county for 10 years.
The appeals court found the prosecutor’s reasons for rejecting prospective jurors to be far-fetched, exaggerated and improbable, labeling them as racist.
However, not all black Americans in the southern US are as lucky as Robinson.
Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a non-profit equal justice advocacy group, published a report last week showing that prosecutors from southern states continue to select juries based on the color of their skin, in particular when the defendant is black.
Most of the time, the report added, the prosecutors’ decisions are upheld in courts of appeal.
IMPERIOUS PROSECUTORS
“From 2005 to 2009, in cases where the death penalty has been imposed, prosecutors in Houston County, Alabama, have used peremptory strikes to remove 80 percent of the African Americans qualified for jury service,” the advocacy group said.
For its report, EJI interviewed 100 people who were struck from juries and studied law books from eight southern states — Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee.
Some of the arguments for excluding prospective black jurors included such terms as “stupid,” “low intelligence,” “lack of education,” “she’s chewing gum,” “she wore eyeglasses and a large hat,” “he’s single,” “he’s married,” “he’s separated,” “he looks like a dealer,” “tentative and timid,” “he seems odd to me,” and “he lives in a high crime area.”
RESISTANCE
“Although in every state there is evidence of general indifference to the seriousness of excluding people from jury service on the basis of race ... some states seem particularly resistant to enforcing every citizen’s right to serve on a jury,” EJI director Bryan Stevenson said.
In Tennessee, for example, all complaints about jury composition submitted by convicted felons have been dismissed by the courts.
SUPREME COURT
In 1986, the US Supreme Court ruled to eliminate racial discrimination in jury selection, but only required prosecutors to produce “race-neutral” arguments for peremptory strikes, leaving the judge to decide on their appropriateness.
Since then, prosecutors in the south have come up with different ways of sidestepping the law and training sessions are even held on how to present unassailable arguments in court.
The result is that entirely white juries are selected in counties with populations that are more than one third black.
MIXED JURIES
Most studies have found that mixed juries take longer to deliberate and make fewer mistakes in judgments. Black jurors have also been found to be less likely to vote for the death penalty.
“Racially diversity on juries is especially critical because the other decision-making roles in the criminal justice system are held mostly by people who are white, from police officers who decide whom to stop and arrest, to prosecutors who decide what charges are brought against which defendant, to trial and appellate judges whose decisions impact powerfully on outcomes at each stage of the criminal justice process,” Stevenson said.
The EJI report noted there are no black prosecutors in Arkansas, Florida or Tennessee.
Over the past 30 years, more than 130 convicts initially placed on death row have been found to be innocent of their crimes.
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