Episode 5: The Reality of the All-White Jury

Justice Talks in Wyoming

Lauren and Nathan sit down to discuss the role of race in the jury selection process. Despite a lot of rhetoric from the courts about ending racism in the criminal justice process, jury selection remains on of the most transparent areas of race discrimination in the criminal justice system today. Each step of the jury selection process, from the initial drawing of names into the jury pool all the way to juror impanelment, operates to preclude racial minority jurors. The result is racially homogenized juries of mostly affluent white citizens. The reality of the all-white jury is that African Americans are over-represented as defendants in trials, but severely underrepresented as participants in the jury decision process. One of the main functions of the criminal jury is to give legitimacy to criminal justice system. When juries are disproportionately white and the operation of structural racism prevents a “fair cross-section” of society from participating in jury service, the verdicts from criminal trials are called into question. And subsequently, so is the fairness of the criminal justice system itself.
References:
Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2011).

Klarman, Michael J., From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality (2005).

Berkeley Law Death Penalty Clinic, Whitewashing the Jury Box: How California Perpetuates the Discriminatory Exclusion of Black and Latinx Jurors (June 2020): https://www.law.berkeley.edu/experiential/clinics/death-penalty-clinic/projects-and-cases/whitewashing-the-jury-box-how-california-perpetuates-the-discriminatory-exclusion-of-black-and-latinx-jurors/

Equal Justice Initiative, Illegal Race Discrimination in Jury Service: A Continuing Legacy (2010): https://eji.org/reports/illegal-racial-discrimination-in-jury-selection/

Key Cases Referenced:

Amadeo v. Zant, 486 U.S. 214 (1988).

Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986) (holding a defendant can challenge a prosecutor’s use of the peremptory strike under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment).

Berghuis v. Smith, 559 U.S. 314 (2010) (reaffirming the Duren test).

Duren v. Mississippi, 439 U.S. 357 (1979) (creating the test for determining when the 6th Amendment’s “fair cross-section” requirement is violated).

Flowers v. Mississippi, 139 S. Ct. 2228 (2019) (reaffirming Batson).

Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400 (1991) (finding a white defendant has third party standing to raise a Batson challenge on behalf of a struck juror).

Purkett v. Elem, 514 U.S. 765 (1995) (allowing prosecutors to offer any “silly or superstitious” reason to strike a racial minority juror, so long as it is race-neutral).

Ramos v. Louisiana, 140 S. Ct. 1390 (2020) (holding that unanimous jury verdicts must be obtained in all criminal trials a the Federal and State level).

Roberts v. State, 2018 WY 23, 411 P.3d 431 (Wyo. 2018) (finding Wyoming’s first Batson violation).

Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1880) (holding a citizen cannot be removed as a juror solely on the basis of race).

Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522 (1975) (finding that the 6th Amendment requires a juror pool to consist of a “fair cross-section” of the community).