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------------------------------------------------- jury selection process
Jocelyn Edwards
April 15, 2016
CJS/221
Instructor EBONY PULLINS-GOVANTES

Jocelyn Edwards
April 15, 2016
CJS/221
Instructor EBONY PULLINS-GOVANTES

An explanation of the jury selection process is known as several methods normally used to select the people that will serve on a jury. During this process you have several steps that occur and they are listed as the following: First thing first, you start off with a jury pool which is where the individuals are selected from a community simply by using a fair random method. Then, a list of names for the jury are collected from Voter's registration and driver's license or state ID renewals. Next, there are summonses mailed to different citizens and that’s where a panel of jurors are appointed to a courtroom and randomly picked to serve in the jury box. Third, the judge and attorneys have an option whether or not to challenge for a cause argument or use one of the peremptory challenges based on jurisdiction. Lastly, the jury in certain jurisdictions must be death qualified to remote those who are opposed to the death penalty.
Here are a few cases that helped controlled the systemic discrimination of the courts in this process: 1880 decision of Strauder v. West Virginia, United States v. Nelson, Swain v. Alabama, Purkett v. Elem, and Batson v. Kentucky just to name a few. Jury nullification is used in relation to diversity because it's based on an ultimately destructive sentiment of racial kinship that prompts particular individuals of given race to care more about their own than people of race, stated Kennedy.
Peremptory challenge is where the jury selection has a right for the attorneys to get rid of a lot of potential juror without to state a reason why. While on the other hand, other potential jurors may be challenged for a cause why it may be different if the jurors meet a fair verdict and this challenge will be presiding by the work. Peremptory challenge is also known as a major part of voir dire. It is also known that even though the supreme court decisions notwithstanding the prosecutor somehow find a way to use peremptory challenge to eliminate African Americans and Hispanics from juries trying African Americans and Hispanics defendants. An example is in march the supreme court decided Snyder v. Louisiana, addressing whether racial bias played a role in the selection of a capital jury. Allen Snyder, an African-American man, was tried for the murder of his estranged wife's companion. During jury selection, the prosecution used peremptory strikes to remove five African-American prospective jurors, leaving Snyder to be tried before an all-white jury. Therefore; He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. However, there was a recent study showed these difficulties by examining the effect of race on peremptory challenges and the reasons provided to justify strikes. The two jurors under consideration each exhibited characteristics that would be concerning to the prosecution; the race of these jurors was varied. Participants were asked which juror they would strike and to provide reasons for their strike. Juror race influenced attorney and lay participants' strikes (Sommers & Norton, Law & Human Behavior, 31, 261–273, 2007).
So North Carolina in 2009 passed an act called Racial Justice Act. It allowed inmates challenge death sentences based on racial bias, a state court determined that prosecutors were dismissing black jurors at twice the rate of other jurors. But this act didn’t last long it was repealed 6 months later due to probability of this being a race-neutral fluke. Now it is said to the impact of jury race is much greater than what a simple correlation of the race of the seated jury and conviction rates would suggest. Is this really true? Yes; imply that the application of justice is highly uneven and raise obvious concerns about the fairness of trials in jurisdictions with a small proportion of blacks in the jury pool.
Which in my opinion I don’t see any different whites because they commit crimes also. The bad thing about it is that prosecutors have racial neutral suggestions for strikes known to be racially motivated, with few limitations to be accepted at face value. Also while using anecdotal evidence prosecutors are not hesitant to play the race card in a criminal case or trial. Normally the information regarding the jury selection suggest that process of adjudication like the pretrial process is not free of racial bias.

References
References
Jury selection. (2015, March 25). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 03:07, April 14, 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jury_selection&oldid=653394017

Peremptory challenge. (2014, September 17). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 04:11, April 14, 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peremptory_challenge&oldid=625940191

Sommers, Samuel R.; Norton, Michael I.
Law and Human Behavior, Vol 31(3), Jun 2007, 261-273

Walker, S., Spohn, C., & Delone, M. (2012,02009, 2007). The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America (5th ed.). Retrieved from The University Phoenix eBook Collection database.

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