All-white jury

"An all-white jury" is an American political term used to describe a jury in a criminal trial, or grand jury investigation, composed only of white people, with an expectation that the deliberations may not be fair and unbiased. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=The all-white jury v the diverse: Evidence, for a change. |url= |quote= In the long, messy experiment that is the trial by jury, one of the most volatile and closely attended variables in the United States is a jury's racial make-up. Depending on context, the phrases "all-white jury" or "all-black jury" can raise a host of expectations -- among them, as MIT social neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe notes below, the expectation that deliberations may be less than fair. The 1995 acquital of O.J. Simpson of murder charges by a jury of nine blacks, one Hispanic, and one white, for instance, was widely seen as skewed by race, as was the 1992 acquital by a mostly white jury of the police officers who were videotaped beating Rodney King the year before. |publisher=Scientific American |date= |accessdate=2007-08-21 ]

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::"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." [cite web
url=http://www.law.du.edu/russell/lh/alh/docs/civrights1875.html
title=Civil Rights Act of 1875, 18 Stat. Part III, p. 335 (Act of Mar. 1, 1875).
publisher=The University of Denver Sturm College of Law
accessdate=2007-09-25]

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 " [http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?friend=nytimes&court=us&vol=100&invol=313 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.cite web
url=http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/struggle_court.html
title=The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: A National Struggle: Important Supreme Court cases in the battle for civil rights
author=Tsahai Tafari
publisher=PBS
accessdate=2007-09-25]

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. [cite web
url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/scottsboro/timeline/timeline2.html
title=Scottsboro Timeline
work=The American Experience
publisher=PBS
accessdate=2007-09-25] 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 " [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/SB_norus.html Norris v. Alabama] ", that blacks may not be excluded systematically from jury service. [cite web
url=http://library.lawschool.cornell.edu/WhatWeHave/SpecialCollections/Scottsboro.cfm
title=Scottsboro Trials Collection, 1931-1937
publisher=Cornell University Library
accessdate=2007-09-25]

Notable cases

Convictions of minority defendants

* Scottsboro Boys, group of African Americans wrongfully convicted for rape of a white woman and sentenced to death in 1931. [cite journal |last= Alschuler |first= Albert W. |authorlink= |coauthors= |year= 1995 |month= February |title= Racial Quotas and the Jury |journal= Duke Law Journal |volume= 44 |issue= 4 |pages= 704 |doi= 10.2307/1372922 ]
* 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. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=New Jersey Journal |url=http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=FA0916FC395F0C768CDDAB0894DC484D81 |quote=The names Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter and John Artis still evoke strong feelings among black residents in Paterson. The two black men were arrested in 1966 for the murder of three whites in a local bar. Both Mr. Carter, a former boxer and contender for the world middleweight championship, and Mr. Artis were later convicted by an "all-white jury". |publisher=New York Times |date=February 5, 1984 |accessdate=2007-08-21 ]
* Darryl Hunt who in 1984 was wrongfully convicted of rape and murder.
* Leonard Peltier a Native American convicted of killing an F.B.I. agent at a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1977.
* 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. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Jena And The Son Of Jim Crow |url=http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/21/opinion/main3285530.shtml |quote=Over the past year the small town of Jena, Louisiana, has vividly established the genealogical link between the two generations of Jim Crow. Paradoxically it has taken the symbolism of the old -- complete with nooses and "all-white" juries -- for the nation to engage with the substance of the new: the racial inequalities in America's penal and judicial systems. |publisher=The Nation |date= |accessdate=2007-08-21 ]

Acquittals of white defendants

* The murder of Emmett Till in Sumner, Mississippi in 1955. [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=The Trial of J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant |url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/peopleevents/e_trial.html |quote=For his closing summation, defense attorney Sidney Carlton told the "all-white", all-male jury that if they didn't free Milam and Bryant: "Your ancestors will turn over in their grave, and I'm sure every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men." After deliberating for only 67 minutes, the jury returned a verdict: not guilty. Reporters said they overheard laughing inside the jury room. One juror later said: "We wouldn't have taken so long if we hadn't stopped to drink pop." |publisher=American Experience |date= |accessdate=2007-08-21 ]

* 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 Whites, he was found guilty.

* The murder of Lemuel Penn in 1964. [ [http://www.lib.unc.edu/cdd/crs/socsci/afro/print/opposition.html University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries] ]

* The murder of Viola Liuzzo in 1965. [ [http://www.constitutioncenter.org/timeline/html/cw11_12276.html National Constitution Center] ]

* The defendants in the 1979 Greensboro Massacre were acquitted in two trials. [cite news| author=Darryl Fears |title=Seeking Closure on 'Greensboro Massacre' |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10392-2005Mar5.html |publisher=Washington Post |date=2005-03-06 |accessdate=2007-09-27 ]

Fiction

* 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". [cite news
url=http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20011111/REVIEWS/60103002/1023
title=To Kill a Mockingbird
author=Roger Ebert
date=November 11 2001
publisher=Chicago Sun-Times
accessdate=2007-09-25]
* The blaxploitation film "Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song" was advertised with a tagline "Rated X by an All-White Jury" [cite news
url=http://www.metamute.org/en/node/7031
title='Rated X by an All-White Jury'
author=Stewart Home
date=5 January 2006
publisher=Mute Magazine
accessdate=2007-09-25] , referring to the MPAA Ratings Board, which had threatened an official X rating if the film was submitted, which director Melvin Van Peebles declined to do. Instead, he used the claim in posters and t-shirts as a "rallying cry" for the black audience he was trying to reach. [cite web
url=http://www.mvpmovie.com/?Blaxploitation
title=How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)
publisher=MVPMovie.com
accessdate=2007-09-25]

References