To: President Donald Trump, The United States House of Representatives, and The United States Senate
Enforce Equality In Jury Selection
Stop racially biased jury selections and help enforce anti-discrimination. Help guarantee everyone their Fourteenth Amendment, equal protection of the laws.
Why is this important?
We are Sociology major students at California State University, Chico. We are taking part in Professor Paul Lopez’ Sociology 350 class, Ethnic and Race Relations, and we have a petition we would like to bring to your attention. The petition is to make the members of a jury represent, as best as possible, both the plaintiff and the defendant; that is, if the indicted are a female and a male, then half the jury should be female and half male; if the indicted are black and white, again, jury should represent both parties. We have had enough of the all-white (or mostly white) jury deciding the fate of all, especially minority populations that overwhelmingly crowd the prisons.
Over the years there has been a great disparity among races in our prison systems and we believe this has to do, in part, with the fact that there continues to be racial discrimination when selecting jury members. Across the United States people of color are underrepresented on juries as a result of racially biased use of peremptory strikes; this is especially prevalent in capital cases and other serious felony cases. In many jurisdictions the peremptory strikes have been used at higher rates as a means to exclude racial minorities from jury service. Many communities across the country have failed to make juries more inclusive and representative of everyone who has the right to serve.
In 2001, African Americans held the highest rates of incarceration; they constituted 900,000 of the total 2.2 million incarcerated. Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics documented that one in six African American men had been incarcerated. As of 2010, African Americans were incarcerated at a rate of 5,525 per 100,000, Latinos 1,146 per 100,000 and 671 for whites and 43 for Asians.
We believe this problem needs a solution because excluding racial minorities from juries only leads to collateral consequences. The credibility, reliability, and integrity of the criminal justice system is compromised when there is even an appearance of bias and discrimination. This will lead the legitimacy of the system to be called into question. Communities of color across the country have rejected and will continue to reject criminal verdicts handed down by juries that are unrepresentative of them.
Research has suggested that compared to diverse juries, all-white juries tend to make more errors, consider fewer perspectives and spend less time deliberating. Having a racially diverse jury helps improve a jury’s ability to assess witness testimony, evaluate cross-racial identifications, avoid presumptions of guilt, and fairly judge a criminally accused.
We believe there should be a greater homogeneity when it comes to the race of the individual on trial and the amount of people of the same race on the jury. We need to have an anti-discrimination enforcement that is dedicated to help prevent any racially biased jury selections. At the end of the day, everyone must have guaranteed equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment and the exclusion of minorities from the pool of potential jurors violates this right. We write this letter because California is, and always has been, a leader when it comes to civil rights and hopefully after reading this petition you will also agree.
Sincerely,
Dr. Paul Lopez, Araceli Sanchez, Chelsea Givens, Isabel Hood, Janel Walter, Mandee Perez, and Monique Schofield
Over the years there has been a great disparity among races in our prison systems and we believe this has to do, in part, with the fact that there continues to be racial discrimination when selecting jury members. Across the United States people of color are underrepresented on juries as a result of racially biased use of peremptory strikes; this is especially prevalent in capital cases and other serious felony cases. In many jurisdictions the peremptory strikes have been used at higher rates as a means to exclude racial minorities from jury service. Many communities across the country have failed to make juries more inclusive and representative of everyone who has the right to serve.
In 2001, African Americans held the highest rates of incarceration; they constituted 900,000 of the total 2.2 million incarcerated. Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics documented that one in six African American men had been incarcerated. As of 2010, African Americans were incarcerated at a rate of 5,525 per 100,000, Latinos 1,146 per 100,000 and 671 for whites and 43 for Asians.
We believe this problem needs a solution because excluding racial minorities from juries only leads to collateral consequences. The credibility, reliability, and integrity of the criminal justice system is compromised when there is even an appearance of bias and discrimination. This will lead the legitimacy of the system to be called into question. Communities of color across the country have rejected and will continue to reject criminal verdicts handed down by juries that are unrepresentative of them.
Research has suggested that compared to diverse juries, all-white juries tend to make more errors, consider fewer perspectives and spend less time deliberating. Having a racially diverse jury helps improve a jury’s ability to assess witness testimony, evaluate cross-racial identifications, avoid presumptions of guilt, and fairly judge a criminally accused.
We believe there should be a greater homogeneity when it comes to the race of the individual on trial and the amount of people of the same race on the jury. We need to have an anti-discrimination enforcement that is dedicated to help prevent any racially biased jury selections. At the end of the day, everyone must have guaranteed equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment and the exclusion of minorities from the pool of potential jurors violates this right. We write this letter because California is, and always has been, a leader when it comes to civil rights and hopefully after reading this petition you will also agree.
Sincerely,
Dr. Paul Lopez, Araceli Sanchez, Chelsea Givens, Isabel Hood, Janel Walter, Mandee Perez, and Monique Schofield