Reply to Thoughts on how race discrimination continues to be a serious problem in jury selection

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The U.S. Supreme Court began wrestled Monday with a problem that has long plagued the criminal justice system: race discrimination in the selection of jurors.  Academic studies, and even some former prosecutors, argue that racial discrimination in jury selection is still common in every state decades after the Supreme Court ruled that it’s unconstitutional.

A majority of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday appeared ready to say race was a primary reason prosecutors struck all the prospective African-American jurors in a Georgia case where an all-white jury sentenced a young black man to death.  At least six of the high court’s nine justices reacted with skepticism — if not outright disbelief — to arguments that Floyd County prosecutors struck all four of the eligible black jurors for reasons other than race in the death-penalty case against Timothy Tyrone Foster.

Justice Stephen Breyer likened the chief prosecutor to his excuse-filled grandson.  Justice Elena Kagan said the case seemed as clear a violation "as a court is ever going to see" of rules the Supreme Court laid out in 1986 to prevent racial discrimination in the selection of juries.  And during oral arguments on Monday morning Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor questioned whether a Georgia prosecutor had used a bogus pretext to bounce an African American woman from a jury.  The prosecutor had claimed he excused her because the woman's cousin had been arrested on a drug charge. "There's an assumption that she has a relationship with this cousin," Sotomayor told Georgia deputy attorney general Beth Burton, who argued Georgia's case before the court. "I have cousins who I know have been arrested, but I have no idea where they're in jail. I hardly—I don't know them...Does that show pretext?"

In my opinion this case and the facts being brought to light is indicative of the institutional racism that remains very prevalent in our society and more prominently throughout our criminal justice system.  The criminal justice system is the part of society least affected by the Civil Rights Movement.  95% of the prosecutors in this country are white and black jurors are up to three times more likely to be dismissed by prosecutors in many states.  The focus for the last year and a half as been on the role of police in the excessive use of force and racial discrimination, but the reality is that every African-American that comes into a court room is being discriminated against.
Post-racial society my ass.

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Very interesting that there's not even one mention of Hispanics, Asians or others. Combined, they represent more than twice the size of AAs in our country. Why does OP (and the NYT article) ignore that reality? Are Hispanics, Asians and others properly represented in jury pools too?[/quote]

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