Juries

Another part of our criminal justice system is juries. A jury is “a group of people who are member of the public and are chosen to make a decision in a legal case” (Merriam-Webster). Juries are an important part of the court and trial process, but also contribute to racial disparities and discrimination.

Juries are supposed to be made up of the criminally charged peers, but this is not always the case. Throughout history, juries were made up of people who were similar to the defendant in the case, but today this is not what happens. This gives a good amount of power to ordinary citizens who usually do not have that much education, or experience with the system. Without knowledge of how of criminal justice system works and whom it targets juries send many people to prison for crimes that are not as serious as others. Many juries do not know that they are contributing to a larger problem of incarcerating young African American men at higher rates than any other group of people in the United States.

Juries are made up of different amounts of people in both state and federal cases. In a federal criminal trial there are 12 jurors, while in a state criminal trial there can be anywhere from 6 to 12 jurors (Arthur). Most of the time juries do not have to be unanimous either.  

Juries are created through different means. They can be created from list systems or key man systems. List systems are generated from “a list of potential jurors from driver’s licenses, voter registration” and through other public records (Arthur: 33). Key man systems are when jurors are selected based on a “voting registrar [who] selects people to be on the list based on reputation and influence” (Arthur: 33). In both types of lists Blacks and other minorities are underrepresented.

This underrepresentation can occur for many reasons. Blacks and other minorities are less likely to be on voting registrations (this may be related to felony disenfranchisement, which does not allow people who have been convicted of felonies to vote during their incarceration, while they are on parole, or even for life), have identification, or a driver’s license. Alice Goffman, the author of On the Run, explains in her ethnography how Black people have a hard time acquiring identification. Goffman explains how the young Black men go through other means to obtain identification then doing it legally (Goffman 2014). This contributes to why Blacks and other minorities do not serve on juries. Other reasons for under representation include: that minorities are less likely to return juror questionnaires, that intelligence test can be used to select jurors, felony disqualification, and that minorities may have trouble with language (Arthur).

Jurors are also put through tests and more before they narrow down the twelve people that will sit of the jury. David Cole states in his essay, Judgement and Discrimination,  that discrimination takes place in jury selection. He says that all white juries are a “staple of the American criminal justice system” (Cole 1999: 119). Cole describes in this essay how race discrimination is still a prevalent part of jury selection today (Cole 1999: 119). This contributes to jurors lacking the knowledge of what is really taking place in the American criminal justice system. All white juries are not going to not convict a young African American if they believe he is guilty of the alleged crime he committed.

Other contributions to why African Americans and other minority groups do not serve on juries relates to people can be not selected to be on juries for no reasons at all. Although it is not constitutional to discriminate when selecting jurors it is still practiced.