Jury Selection Process Paper
Amber Spencer
CJS/221
August 24, 2015
Stephen Humphries

The disparity in the jury selection process has been present in the United States for centuries. The jury is a very important part of the justice system, even though many cases are settled by the plea deal and never make it in front of a jury. The cases that seem to end up in front of a jury are very high-profile crimes that have long prison sentences or even the death penalty on the table. What the jury was developed for was to provide "the criminal defendant's fundamental protection of life and liberty against race and color prejudice" (McCleskey v. Kemp pg. 279). In the early 1800's only white men were allowed to serve on a jury. In 1880 in the case of Strauder v. West Virginia, the supreme court found that it was violating a clause under the Fourteenth Amendment by excluding African-Americans from the jury pools because of their color alone was causing a great deal of harm to the African American population. In the case of Neal v. Delaware, which occurred only a few years after Strauder v. West Virginia. The courts stated that they were not allowing African Americans to the Jury pool because they were not meeting the criteria of intelligence, moral integrity, and experience. The same issues arise for any Hispanic personal as well. Even though they technically fell under the same guidelines as the Struater v. West Virginia by violating the fourteenth amendment by not allowing them to be on any jury pool because of race alone, but it took over 70 years for the Hispanics to get any resolve. The state of Texas was trying to prove that Hispanics were part of the white race with a Spanish heritage so having an all-white jury was still a jury of the same race making it legal. Jury nullification has been around for centuries. Jury nullification means that a group of jurors decide on an outcome of a case by not basing their decision on the law and the legal attributes of the case. This usually happens when jurors have a lot in common with the defendant and can look past the evidence of the case to make a decision. I can see this happening a lot with a victimless crime such as drug crimes. If the jury are assembled of groups of people that personally know how hard it is to make money the honest way they would more likely take pity on the defendant because they had once been in their shoes. I think this could also be the reason behind a lot of the jury pool selection discrimination. The court were afraid that if they allowed other races onto a jury then they would be harsher on whites then other and vice versa. I would say that if the jury was an all-white upper-class group deciding over an African Americans drug dealer's case. There would be stiffer penalties and ruling against the defendant then if there were some African Americans on the jury. A great example of peremptory challenges to jury selection and the impact on the jury composition would be the case of Snyder v. Louisiana. In this cases, an African American was being accused of murder. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. The defendant is trying to say that the prosecuting attorney used peremptory challenges to get all of African American juror removed. In this cases, the prosecutor was successful, and Snyder went in front of a jury consisting of all white jurors. I think that this happens more often than we would like to see, a prosecutor trying to remove any jurors that could make them lose a case. They can come up with some of the craziest reason as to why a juror does not meet the criteria. I think that this can greatly affect the outcome of a case. I honestly could not imagine living back when all of the juries were made up of middle-aged white men. I think would have been even scarier if I was an African-American being accused of a crime at that time. I would have to say that the numbers were not even close to being in your favor. I would be interested to see if any racial group outside of whites were ever found not guilty. I know that there are still issues within the jury selection process, but I can say that it has come along away in terms of fairness and discrimination. All we can do is continue making changes for the better.
References
McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1987) (quoting Struader v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303[1880]).