“. . . the perpetuation of white supremacy within the legal system depended substantially on the preservation of all-white juries.” Michael J. Klarman, “Racial Origins of Modern Criminal Procedure”
The three civil war amendments to the Constitution (13, 14, and 15) ended slavery, granted civil rights to freed people, and voting rights to freed men. Tucked in but not actually specified was the right for freedmen to serve on juries. But this was not a right southern states were eager to grant, and it has always been contested. In the case of Strauder v West Virginia (1879), the US Supreme Court held that state laws barring people from jury duty on grounds of race were unconstitutional. In Norris v. Alabama (1935), the prohibition was extended to bar “systematic and arbitrary exclusion of qualified African Americans from jury panels.” In Batson v. Kentucky (1986), the rights of potential black jurors to be seated–and of black defendants to be tried by “a jury of their peers” — was extended by prohibiting lawyers from peremptorily excluding anyone on account of race, though they did not actually have to give a reason for exclusion that made sense. A black man was excluded from a jury because his son had been convicted “of a similar crime,” although the case to be tried was a rape-murder and the son had received a suspended sentence for stealing hubcaps as a juvenile. Really? Racially mixed juries tend to deliberate longer and smarter. Bernard Duse was tried by an all-white jury.
Additional Reading
This story from The Marshall Project reports on unconscious racism in the jury selection process:
A Growing Number of State Courts Are Confronting Unconscious Racism In Jury Selection | The Marshall Project
