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It looks like racial discrimination in jury selection is going to turn around and bite NC. There are another 149 cases pending that will be reviewed because of the racial justice act.
It looks like racial discrimination in jury selection is going to turn around and bite NC. There are another 149 cases pending that will be reviewed because of the racial justice act.
Central to Robinson's case was the Michigan State University study. It reported that, of almost 160 people on North Carolina's death row, 31 had all-white juries, and 38 had only one person of color.
Wow. Um, this is really interesting because NC is roughly 20% black.
Thus if you chose people completely at random the chances of having:
No Blacks on jury = 7%
1 Black = 21%
2 Blacks = 28%
3 Blacks = 24%
4 or more = 20%
However, prosecutors and defense attorneys stack juries with people that will be inclined to meet their views.
In capital murder cases you want men more then women for example and so on and so forth.
Additionally we know that there are things that will get you removed from jury duty so we'd need to know how many blacks males were in the jury duty pool as a % of population to draw accurate inferences.
For example, if 100 jurors are there to choose from and 6 are black men, 14 black women and 40 white men and 40 white women....and they try to select only men for a capital murder case it changes the statistics to.....
No Blacks on jury = 19%
1 Black = 34%
2 Blacks = 28%
3 Blacks = 14%
4 or more = 6%
And THESE ^^^^ numbers are essentially exactly in line with the observed results.
Also interesting to note that the articles poster child had a jury with 9 whites on it out of 12....which is the exact demographic median.
I'm a little concerned because what next? We start re-doing the sentences of rapists where a disproportionate number of women serve on jury duties?
In short, I would like to see the full details of the study and see what other variables they considered and how they came to their conclusion that race is the only statistically significant variable in being removed from the jury pool.
I am as suspect of prosecutors trying to stack the jury with whites (which I'm sure was done in some cases) as I am a group trying to massage statistics in order to make an anti-death penalty stand.
I'm alarmed at the possible legal repercussions as this could expand to ALL LEGAL CASES and not just death penalty cases.
I understand your argument based on statistics but it appears on the surface that prosecutors excluded black jurors from cases that involved black defendants. So this act of manipulating justice shouldn’t have been done and only worked against them in the long run. In my opinion any prosecutor that was involved in these cases that will be overturned should be fired and disbarred for the justice systems and victims sake.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mathguy
Wow. Um, this is really interesting because NC is roughly 20% black.
Thus if you chose people completely at random the chances of having:
No Blacks on jury = 7%
1 Black = 21%
2 Blacks = 28%
3 Blacks = 24%
4 or more = 20%
However, prosecutors and defense attorneys stack juries with people that will be inclined to meet their views.
In capital murder cases you want men more then women for example and so on and so forth.
Additionally we know that there are things that will get you removed from jury duty so we'd need to know how many blacks males were in the jury duty pool as a % of population to draw accurate inferences.
For example, if 100 jurors are there to choose from and 6 are black men, 14 black women and 40 white men and 40 white women....and they try to select only men for a capital murder case it changes the statistics to.....
No Blacks on jury = 19%
1 Black = 34%
2 Blacks = 28%
3 Blacks = 14%
4 or more = 6%
And THESE ^^^^ numbers are essentially exactly in line with the observed results.
Also interesting to note that the articles poster child had a jury with 9 whites on it out of 12....which is the exact demographic median.
I'm a little concerned because what next? We start re-doing the sentences of rapists where a disproportionate number of women serve on jury duties?
In short, I would like to see the full details of the study and see what other variables they considered and how they came to their conclusion that race is the only statistically significant variable in being removed from the jury pool.
I am as suspect of prosecutors trying to stack the jury with whites (which I'm sure was done in some cases) as I am a group trying to massage statistics in order to make an anti-death penalty stand.
I'm alarmed at the possible legal repercussions as this could expand to ALL LEGAL CASES and not just death penalty cases.
Race played a "persistent, pervasive and distorting role" in jury selection and couldn't be explained other than that "prosecutors have intentionally discriminated" against Robinson and other capital defendants statewide, Weeks said. Prosecutors eliminated black jurors more than twice as often as white jurors, according to a study by two Michigan State University law professors Weeks said he found highly reliable.
I've never understood how jury selection could be racial tainted if both the prosecution and defense approve of the people who eventually serve on the jury.
Basically, they looked at strike rates for getting kicked out of the jury pool. I give them and A+ as a good way to look at the problem.
Blacks were much more likely to be kicked out of the jury pool....however....they got kicked out of the jury pool A LOT even when the defendant is white.
(A bit higher when the defendant was black but the statistical strength of that argument given the sample size....I'm not sure about.)
Soooooo, you look further (Page 22) and you see that there are lots of big ticket items that get you kicked off death penalty juries like oh.....being against the death penalty. <reaches for a stiff drink>
Where they UTTERLY fail is to adjust for the covariances in that blacks may be much more anti-DP than whites. (Duh!) and that the jury pool only had 16% black vs. 20% population AND nowhere did they indicate a sex-covariance like was 5% of the jury pool black men and 11% black women? And conveniently they left off gender related strike rates which are KNOWN to be biased against women. (huge red flag that they completely ignored a well known reason for DP jury selection)
Lawyers playing with statistics trying to make a name for themselves as anti-DP. I honestly don't know how someone with sufficient education can look at this study and come away with enough information to reach their conclusions.
They seem to have deliberately truncated their study and let me tell you, that's a really bad sign when dealing with statistics.
I understand your argument based on statistics but it appears on the surface that prosecutors excluded black jurors from cases that involved black defendants. So this act of manipulating justice shouldn’t have been done and only worked against them in the long run. In my opinion any prosecutor that was involved in these cases that will be overturned should be fired and disbarred for the justice systems and victims sake.
If the prosecutor is kicking people off solely due to ethnicity then there is a problem and I concur that this has likely happened on occasion.
However, if they are being kicked off because blacks in the jury pool are more often anti-death penalty or knew the victim (2 key ways they listed on page 22) then that's another story.
The *statistical* study by the lawyers is in my opinion quite likely to be trying to do an incomplete analysis in order to reach their desired conclusion.
I view this study and the resulting law to be a political end-around to knee-cap the death penalty instead of introducing legislation to stop the DP.
In my field I've seen MANY 1/2 arsed studies produced by lawyers that were quite frankly dishonest statistical abuse. The british vaccine study springs immediately to mind....
It depends on the court system but I found this. Based on statistics and percentages it would be quite easy to exclude minorities from juries. So a racist prosecutor could potentially stack the odds in their favor illegally and the justice system can be held accountable.
Circuit Court of Miami (2012)
“The law permits counsel for each party to excuse a certain number of jurors without giving any reason. However, prospective jurors may not be excused for reasons based upon their race, gender or nationality.”
Quote:
Originally Posted by renault
from the link-
Race played a "persistent, pervasive and distorting role" in jury selection and couldn't be explained other than that "prosecutors have intentionally discriminated" against Robinson and other capital defendants statewide, Weeks said. Prosecutors eliminated black jurors more than twice as often as white jurors, according to a study by two Michigan State University law professors Weeks said he found highly reliable.
I've never understood how jury selection could be racial tainted if both the prosecution and defense approve of the people who eventually serve on the jury.
I would agree. But only after we make racism illegal. Can’t have one without the other!
Quote:
Originally Posted by LuckyGem
Race based legislation encourages racism.
Time to make race based legislation illegal.
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