One of the primary issues impacting jury impartiality in jurisdictions across the country is the under-representation of racial and ethnic minorities.
This dynamic has historic origins as women and minorities were systematically excluded from jury service. The Supreme Court has since attempted to address these issues by generating a rule that requires juries be selected from a "fair cross-section" of society. The selection of a petit jury from a representative cross section of the community is an essential component of the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. Louisiana , U.
Missouri , U. The Court has not defined the term "distinctive," but indicated that it " must be linked to the purposes of the fair cross-section requirement. McCree , U. Louisiana , the Court described the purpose of the fair cross-section requirement as 1 "guard[ing] against the exercise of arbitrary power" and ensuring that the "common sense judgment of the community" will act as "a hedge against the overzealous or mistaken prosecutor," 2 preserving "public confidence in the fairness of the criminal justice system," and 3 implementing our belief that "sharing in the administration of justice is a phase of civic responsibility.
Examples of distinctive groups are: Black people Peters v. Kiff , U. Louisiana , Mexican-Americans Castaneda v. Partida , U. Reasons vary as to why juries still lack the diversity of the communities from which they are drawn.
Below are some examples of how certain processes may ultimately create less diverse jury pools. Since the onset of the COVID pandemic, court administrators have faced increasing challenges to ensuring that juries are representative.
The Court indicated that under the same circumstances in a federal trial it would have overturned the conviction pursuant to its supervisory power. Essentially, the defendant must make a showing of prejudice into which the court may then inquire. Chandler v. Yount, U. See Turner v. Gonzales v. Wisconsin, U. Skilling v. Mangum, U. Denno, U. The rule applies to the states. Roberts v. Russell, U. But see Nelson v. Colorado, U.
See Fed. See Pena-Rodriguez , slip. Pless, U. Shauers, U. In addition, while the no-impeachment rule, by its very nature, prohibits testimony by jurors, evidence of misconduct other than juror testimony can be used to impeach the verdict. The stigma that attends racial bias may make it difficult for a juror to report inappropriate statements during the court of juror deliberations. The Court thought the problem went only to the issue of the sentence imposed and saw no evidence that a jury from which death-scrupled persons had been excluded was more prone to convict than were juries on which such person sat.
Bumper v. North Carolina, U. Witherspoon was given added significance when, in Woodson v. See also Adams v. Accord , Darden v. Wainwright, U. Kentucky, U. In Taylor v. Supreme Court rules that the Sixth Amendment requires that a jury be drawn from a representative cross section of the community where the crime was committed.
In this case, the Court rules the requirement was violated because women were excluded from the jury pool. In Duren v. Missouri , the U. In this case, the Court finds that the Sixth Amendment was violated because even though women made up more than 50 percent of the general population, they represented only 15 percent of the jury pool.
In Batson v. Kentucky , the U. Supreme Court decides that peremptory challenges based on race are unconstitutional. In Lockhart v. McCree , the U. In Holland v. Illinois , the U. Supreme Court builds on its ruling in Lockhart v.
McCree that the jury pool must be a fair cross section of the community, but not the jury itself. In Holland, the court says that the Sixth Amendment requires only an impartial jury, not a representative one. In Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co. In Georgia v. McCollum , the U. Supreme Court rules that it is just as wrong for defense attorneys to strike potential jurors on the basis of their race as it is for prosecutors to do so.
In Apprendi v. New Jersey , the U. Supreme Court invalidates a New Jersey hate-crime law, ruling that it violates the Sixth Amendment by improperly allowing a judge, and not a jury, to decide that the crime was motivated by racial bias, thereby increasing the penalty.
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