Racial Discrimination and Jury Selection
UPDATE (6/21/2019): "
"The Supreme Court on Friday reaffirmed its strict prohibition against racial bias in jury selection, voting 7-2 to overturn a black defendant’s murder conviction by a Mississippi court after a prosecutor dismissed 41 of 43 African Americans over the course of six trials for the same killings." https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-reaffirms-rule-against-racial-bias-in-jury-selection-11561129358?mod=hp_lead_pos6
Peremptory challenges are commonplace as citizen jurors are removed from the jury pool without necessitating a reason. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has been hearing testimony surrounding whether racial bias was present during jury selection for the Curtis Flowers murder trials of 1997, 2004, and 2010.[1] In the Flowers’ case, it is being argued that the prosecutor knowingly removed prospective jurors due to race and/or ethnicity in order to tip the balance of the trial. Flowers has been tried six times for four murders in the mid-1990s after his conviction was overturned by the Mississippi State Supreme Court three times, which was then followed by two hung juries. He was re-convicted by a predominantly white jury in 2010 and sentenced to death.
"The Supreme Court on Friday reaffirmed its strict prohibition against racial bias in jury selection, voting 7-2 to overturn a black defendant’s murder conviction by a Mississippi court after a prosecutor dismissed 41 of 43 African Americans over the course of six trials for the same killings." https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-reaffirms-rule-against-racial-bias-in-jury-selection-11561129358?mod=hp_lead_pos6
Peremptory challenges are commonplace as citizen jurors are removed from the jury pool without necessitating a reason. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has been hearing testimony surrounding whether racial bias was present during jury selection for the Curtis Flowers murder trials of 1997, 2004, and 2010.[1] In the Flowers’ case, it is being argued that the prosecutor knowingly removed prospective jurors due to race and/or ethnicity in order to tip the balance of the trial. Flowers has been tried six times for four murders in the mid-1990s after his conviction was overturned by the Mississippi State Supreme Court three times, which was then followed by two hung juries. He was re-convicted by a predominantly white jury in 2010 and sentenced to death.
The national struggle surrounding racial discrimination in
jury selection has been a problem for decades. In 2018, the Washington State’s
Supreme Court took action in response to concerns regarding all-white, or
predominantly all-white, jury selections and created General Rule 37. This rule
was drafted to address the use of racial discrimination during jury selection,
and to give attorney’s recourse if they feel that a prospective juror is being
ejected due to perceived racial bias.[2] Furthermore, due to a
toothless anti-discrimination and race-neutral standard from the 1980s that
allowed prosecutors to strike black jurors for perceived conduct complaints,
Rule 37 seeks to support jurors of color through strict standards regarding
peremptory strikes, including whether a prosecutor is showing bias when they
“bombard a juror of color with significantly more and different questions, and
then [proceeds to] strike that juror from the jury pool.”[3]
Given that Washington is the first state in the nation to
tackle this issue, it will be interesting to witness how the outcome of the
U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling will impact jury selection rules in other states across the U.S.
[1] Nina Totenberg, Supreme Court Justices Seem Incredulous at Repeated Racial Bias in Jury
Selection, NPR (March 20, 2019), https://www.npr.org/2019/03/20/705211168/supreme-court-justices-seem-incredulous-at-repeated-racial-bias-in-jury-selectio
[2] Wash. G.R. 37 (2018). https://www.courts.wa.gov/content/publicUpload/Supreme%20Court%20Orders/GR37.pdf
[3] Imani Gandy, Washington Supreme Court Passes New Rule to Tackle the State’s
All-White Jury Problem, Rewire News (April 11, 2019), https://www.courts.wa.gov/content/publicupload/eclips/2018%2004%2012%20Washington%20Supreme%20Court%20Passes%20New%20Rule%20to%20Tackle%20the%20States%20All%20White%20Jury%20Problem.pdf
