Remember the time when a white defendant accused of murdering a black victim was arrested by a black police officer, faced an all-black jury, black judge and black prosecutor in America? Me neither.
But for blacks caught up in America’s criminal justice system (be they defendants, plaintiffs or victims) facing a white cop, an all-white jury, white judge and white prosecutor isn't uncommon...let alone fair--especially for blacks involved in criminal cases where they’re at odds with a white person.
Americans would like to think justice is blind, but it's not. It's actually far from it.
George Zimmerman benefited from that alleged color blindness and the built-in advantages it provides for whites in our criminal justice system. And those thinking, perhaps hoping, that those of us seeking justice for Trayvon Martin wouldn’t notice that or would lose interest and simply move on had better not hold their collective breaths.
We’re not going anywhere until the miscarriage of justice that allowed a grown man armed with a semiautomatic weapon to racially profile, terrorize, confront and shoot dead an unarmed, innocent kid is somehow corrected.
I used to look at the not guilty verdict in trial of the men who murdered Emmett Till in 1955 and think nothing like that could ever happen in America again. I was wrong: Zimmerman is free and might even get the gun back he used to send a child to an early grave.
There are stark parallels between the cases of Till and Martin, but the one that bothers me most: In 2013, Seminole County, Fla. couldn't find one single black person suitable for the Zimmerman trial jury.
I figured Zimmerman would be acquitted the moment the all-white jury was seated. But I figured I’d wait to hear the jurors speak before making a final judgment about their verdict. Then came Juror B37’s interview with Anderson Cooper. I thought hearing from the jurors might help me understand the verdict and it did. Justice for Martin never had a chance. The Zimmerman “trial” was settled at jury selection.
Juror B37’s statements underscored her biases toward Zimmerman. So much so that CNN Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin said, “Her identification with George Zimmerman is striking!” So much so that she said she wouldn’t mind having him on her own neighborhood watch team. Unreal.
She seemed to relate to Zimmerman on a personal level. Juror B37 and the rest of those jurors simply saw Zimmerman as one of “us” and Martin as one of “them.” That jury REALLY proved ethnic diversity on juries is a must, especially for criminal cases where race is a factor--even though she, of course, denied that it was and I’d bet the other jurors will, too--eventually. If there had been a black person on that jury, no way any of the jurors are saying that nonsense.
Jury pools and juries are places where race really, really matters in America...ABSOLUTELY matters. A 2010 study called "Illegal Racial Discrimination in Jury Selection: A Continuing Legacy" by the Equal Justice Initiative found that widespread racial discrimination persists in jury selection, particularly in criminal trials (http://www.eji.org/....).
Here's some shocking excerpts from that study:
The staff of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) has looked closely at jury selection procedures in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee. We uncovered shocking evidence of racial discrimination in jury selection in every state. We found evidence that some prosecutors employed by state and local governments actually have been trained to exclude people on the basis of race and instructed on how to conceal their racial bias.
In courtrooms across the United States, people of color are dramatically underrepresented on juries as a result of racially biased use of peremptory strikes. This phenomenon is especially prevalent in capital cases and other serious felony cases.
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% of the African Americans qualified for jury service. As a result, half of these juries were all-white and the remainder had only a single black member, despite the fact that Houston County is 27% African-American.
The nature and quality of jury deliberations is better when jury diversity is greater. By every deliberation measure…heterogeneous groups outperformed homogeneous groups.
First, diverse groups spent more time deliberating than did all-White groups. . . . us[ing] their extra time productively, discussing a wider range of case facts and personal perspectives. . . . Even though they deliberated longer and discussed more information, diverse groups made fewer factual errors than all-White groups. Moreover inaccuracies were more likely to be corrected in diverse groups. . . . [D]iverse groups were also more open-minded in that they were less resistant to discussions of controversial race-related topics.
Racial diversity significantly improves a jury’s ability to assess the reliability and credibility of witness testimony, evaluate the accuracy of cross-racial identifications, avoid presumptions of guilt, and fairly judge a criminally accused. Accordingly, the reliability and accuracy of the criminal justice system is greatly enhanced when juries represent a fair cross-section of the community as the Constitution requires.
Too often, the only opportunity for racial minorities to influence decision-making in America’s criminal justice system is to serve on a jury. Exclusion of qualified citizens of color from jury service amounts, then, to the near-complete absence of minority perspective, influence, and power in the criminal justice system.
In their study, "The Impact of Jury Race in Criminal Trials," published in 2012, Shamena Anwar, Patrick Bayer and Randi Hjalmarsson, analyzed the results from over 700 felony trials in Lake and Sarasota Counties in Florida from 2000-2010 (
http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/...). Their study looked at how conviction rates varied with the racial composition of the pool of jurors called for each trial.
Here's an outtake from that study:
In cases with no blacks in the jury pool, black defendants were convicted at an 81% rate and white defendants at a 66% rate. When the jury pool included at least one black member, conviction rates were almost identical: 71% for black defendants and 73% for whites.
Unfortunately for Martin, although there were a few blacks in the jury pool, they were all struck for curious reasons--a huge victory for the defense team, which obviously didn’t want blacks on that jury.
Maybe we need some sort of Affirmative Action for potential minority jurors. I'm joking about that, I guess, but something has got to change. Otherwise, the scales of American justice will continue to tilt heavily against people of color--just check out the Marissa Alexander case.
Trayvon Martin is our Emmett Till. Sadly, I don’t believe Till ever got justice. We can’t allow justice to evade Martin, too--because if it does, the America of 2013 is no more just or free for ALL of its citizens than the America of 1955 was.
4:08 PM PT: Since I published this diary early Thursday morning (July 25), Juror B29 from the GZ trial has come forward and is Hispanic, brown in color I suppose. She said she believes Zimmerman go away with murder. Too little. Too late. If she really believed that, she should have the courage to hang that jury. Still, no blacks were on that jury--which I believe would've made a difference. Just a terrible miscarriage of justice. Sigh.