Critique: Issues in the Jury Selection Procedure
In Alameda County, California, District Attorney Pamela Price dug up evidence suggesting that county prosecutors have been involved in Problematic and racist practices, particularly in death penalty cases, for years.
Racial profiling seems to have been a systematic issue, with Black and Jewish individuals being deliberately excluded from jury duty based solely on their race and ethnicity, as declared by US District Judge Vince Chhabria.
In April, Price revealed that Judge Chhabria had ordered her office to scrutinize all death penalty cases in Alameda County — a total of 35 cases are under investigation now — due to evidence surfacing from jury selection notes of a 1995 capital murder case. The judge is presiding over the ongoing case of Ernest Dykes, who is currently on death row.
This exposed flaw in our judicial system points to a serious flaw in the use of peremptory challenges. Instead of dealing with this issue and its subsequent injustices after the fact, as Price has pledged to do effectively, maybe it's high time to discuss abolishing the use of peremptory challenges altogether.
Peremptory strikes permit a party in a trial to eliminate potential jurors before the trial without specifying a reason related to race, religion, ethnicity, or gender.
Despite clear constitutional prohibitions against racial exclusion, notes from the Dykes' case revealed distressing racial discrimination, including prosecutors labeling a Black woman as "short, fat, troll." Other notes also described another potential juror as "Banker. Jew?," according to notes shared by Price's office with KQED, a San Francisco-based public radio and TV station.
The notes appear to show that prosecutors intentionally excluded Jewish and Black female jurors from the jury pool.
Allegations of racial bias in jury selection are deeply entrenched in the American legal system. Prosecutors have frequently exploited peremptory challenges to skew the composition of juries and compromise the fairness of our justice system.
Patterns of racial bias have been discovered in various states, such as California, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
In addition, executive and judicial reports published in other states, including Arizona, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Washington, have highlighted the persistence of racially discriminatory peremptory strikes.
This flaw in our system has been an issue for decades. In 1986, the US Supreme Court attempted to put an end to centuries of discriminatory jury selection with Batson v. Kentucky, but prosecutors have consistently managed to evade Batson's guidelines.
Among the reasons for this, Batson requires a defendant to prove that the prosecutor intentionally discriminated based on race, which is challenging to prove and incapable of addressing implicit bias. It is easily for prosecutors to mask race-based decisions by offering alternative reasons for excluding jurors. In some instances, well-intentioned prosecutors can still make discriminatory decisions while using peremptory strikes.
While defendants can and should utilize peremptories to find sympathetic jurors, the need for prosecutors to use peremptories in jury selection should be reconsidered. Asministers of justice, prosecutors bear special ethical responsibilities to ensure fairness in the legal process and extend the right to serve on juries to all community members. Their duty is to strive for a just verdict, not to secure a guilty verdict at all costs.
Eliminating or avoiding peremptory challenges by prosecutors would not diminish their ability to eliminate biased jurors; instead, it would abolish a tool that perpetuates racism, denies the right of community members to serve on juries, and undermines the credibility of our judicial system.
This small but essential step could help dismantle systemic racism in our legal system and rebuild trust in our pursuit of justice.
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In discussing the abolition of peremptory challenges, it's important to consider the potential impact on jury diversity and the prevention of racial bias. Many argue that these challenges have historically been used to exclude individuals based on their racial or ethnic background, as seen in the case of Ernest Dykes in Alameda County.
Therefore, it's crucial to examine and address the role of opinions and biases in jury selection procedures. With the evidence surfacing of discriminatory practices within the system, it becomes apparent that the opinions and biases of prosecutors and jurors can significantly impact the fairness of trials and ultimately lead to injustices.
