All-white jury

An all-white jury is an American situation where a jury in a criminal trial or grand jury investigation is composed only of white people. Often, the implication of invoking such a makeup is that the deliberations may not be fair and unbiased.^[1] Racial discrimination in jury selection has a long history in the United States.^[2]

Current precedent and legal challenges

Under the legal standard set forth by the United States Supreme Court in Batson v. Kentucky, the striking of a juror on account of race denies a defendant equal protection under the constitution. However the court held that a defendant is not entitled to a jury containing or lacking members of any particular race, and the striking of jurors for race-neutral reasons is permissible. This standard has been extended to civil trials in Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Company and on the basis of gender in J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B.

History

Following the Civil War, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution had abolished slavery and guaranteed basic civil rights to African-Americans; the Civil Rights Act of 1875 extended this to "public accommodation" and jury selection, including the establishment of criminal penalties for court officers who interfered:^[3]

Sec 4. That no citizen possessing all other qualification which are or may be prescribed by law shall be disqualified for service as grand or petit juror in any court of the United States, or of any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude; and any officer or other person charged with any duty in the selection or summoning of jurors who shall exclude or fail to summon any citizen for the cause aforesaid shall, on conviction thereof, be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and be fined not more than five thousand dollars.^[4]

The United States Supreme Court subsequently ruled inconsistently in two 1880 cases before it. In Strauder v. West Virginia, the court held that an all-white jury violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment; yet in Virginia v. Rives, the court denied an appeal on similar grounds, noting that an all-white jury was not in itself proof that a defendant's rights had been violated. Effectively, this nullified Strauder, permitting a segregated legal system where whites could be tried by their peers, but blacks could be denied the same privilege.

In 1883, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was overturned entirely by an 8-1 majority on the Supreme Court. In 1896, the landmark Plessy v. Ferguson decision enshrined the unofficial civil code termed Jim Crow, ranging from separate but equal accommodation to voter disenfranchisement and jury exclusion; blacks were thus denied access to the public, political, and judicial spheres.^[3]

The 1930s brought the Scottsboro Boys case, where nine black youths were accused of raping two white women, one of whom later recanted her testimony. Eight of the defendants were sentenced to death (although none would be executed). Defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz showed the Alabama Supreme Court that blacks had been kept off jury rolls, and that names of blacks had been added to the rolls after the trial to conceal this fact.^[5] The appeals in the case ultimately led to two landmark Supreme Court decisions. In Powell v. Alabama, the Court ruled that criminal defendants are entitled to effective counsel, and in Norris v. Alabama, that blacks may not be excluded systematically from jury service.^[6]

Despite Norris, the problem of exclusion of blacks from juries did not disappear. In 1985, the Supreme Court in Batson v. Kentucky addressed a situation where a prosecutor had used his peremptory challenges to strike all four blacks from a jury and obtained a conviction against the black defendant. Defendant was not able to demonstrate that the state's court system systematically excluded blacks from juries but nonetheless raised due process and equal protection arguments in his particular case. In Batson, the court ruled that the defendant could make a prima facie case for purposeful racial discrimination in jury selection by relying on the record and that a State denies a black defendant equal protection when it puts him on trial before a jury from which members of his race have been purposely excluded.^[7]

Despite Batson, the problem of exclusion of blacks from juries has not disappeared. As the Mississippi Supreme Court noted in reversing a 2004 conviction in one case where prosecutors used all 15 of their peremptory strikes on black jurors: "racially motivated jury selection is still prevalent 20 years after Batson."^[8]

Notable cases

Convictions of minority defendants

• Lynching of Ed Johnson in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1906. Convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to death for raping a white woman, Johnson appealed to the United States Supreme Court challenging the racial composition of his jury. Johnson's execution was stayed by Justice John Marshall Harlan but Johnson was then lynched by a mob with the acquiescence of the local sheriff. A note left on his body informed the Court: "Come get your nigger now."^[2]
• Scottsboro Boys, group of African Americans wrongfully convicted for rape of a Caucasian woman and sentenced to death in 1931.^[9]
• George Stinney in South Carolina in 1944. Convicted by an all-white jury and executed by electric chair at age 14 despite no physical evidence.^[10]
• Rubin "Hurricane" Carter in Paterson, New Jersey in 1967 in his first trial, but was retried and reconvicted in 1976 by a jury that included African Americans.^[11]
• Clarence Brandley, convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to death for the murder of a white high school student;^[12] later exonerated.
• Mychal Bell, a member of the Jena Six, convicted of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated second-degree battery in Jena, Louisiana in 2007.^[13]

Acquittals of white defendants

• The murder of Emmett Till in Sumner, Mississippi in 1955.^[14]
• Byron De La Beckwith whose trial for the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers twice ended in a hung jury. At a third trial, over thirty years later and with a jury containing both African Americans and Caucasians, he was found guilty.^[15]
• The murder of Lemuel Penn in 1964.^[16]
• The murder of Viola Liuzzo in 1965.^[17]
• The defendants in the 1979 Greensboro Massacre were acquitted in two trials.^[18]
• The aggravated assault and murder of Arthur McDuffie by three white police officers and one Cuban police officer in Miami in 1980.^[19]

Convictions of white defendants

• Eighteen defendants were indicted for the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi in United States v. Price. Seven defendants, including a deputy sheriff, were found guilty on civil rights charges, making this trial the first time an all-white jury in Mississippi convicted a white official in a civil rights killing.^[20]
• In a civil suit brought against the United Klans of America for the murder of Michael Donald, an all-white jury determined that rather than hold the three murderers responsible, that the murder was instigated by the UKA and therefore the entire group was at fault. The group was sued for $7 million for wrongful death. The UKA, which was bankrupted by the lawsuit and could not pay, had to settle by signing over the deed to their national headquarters to the Donald family.

In popular culture

• In the novel and film To Kill a Mockingbird, a black man is accused of rape and tried before an all-white jury; in a central scene, principled defense attorney Atticus Finch fails to sway the verdict toward his client, who is later shot trying to escape. Critic Roger Ebert calls Finch's summation "one of Gregory Peck's great scenes".^[21]
• Melvin Van Peebles' film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song was advertised with a tagline Rated X by an All-White Jury,^[22] referring to the MPAA Ratings Board, which had given the film an X rating. Van Peebles used the claim in posters and t-shirts as a "rallying cry" for the black audience he was trying to reach.^[23]
• Most productions of the play and film Twelve Angry Men depict an all-white jury tasked with deliberating the guilt of a minority defendant (Puerto Rican in the 1957 film version)^[24] who is accused of murdering his father.
• The phrase "...and the all-white jury agreed" appears in Bob Dylan's song "Hurricane".

References