Dallas Morning News
Dallas County defense lawyers prefer almost any black juror over a white one, according to a newspaper investigation.
The number of blacks on juries in Dallas County approximate their proportion of the population, but primarily because defense attorneys have struck whites from the panel to cancel prosecutors' strikes against blacks, according to a statistical analysis by The Dallas Morning News.
The News reported its findings in Monday's editions in the second part of a three-part series on jury selection in Dallas County.
Defense attorneys used 6 percent of their peremptory challenges of potential jurors, or strikes, against blacks compared to 82 percent of strikes against whites, which eliminates more than a third of white eligible jurors, according to the report.
Although defense attorneys say they seek a more diverse jury, they only occasionally challenge prosecutors who eliminate black prospective jurors, the newspaper's analysis showed.
"Most defense attorneys, if they're honest, will admit that they want to get rid of the whites because the prosecution is getting rid of the blacks," said David Baldus, one of the nationally recognized experts on race in jury selection who reviewed the newspaper's findings. "It's a kind of discrimination that no one is really objecting to very much because everybody is doing it."
The newspaper examined 108 noncapital felony cases tried in 2002. The analysis also found:
- Defense attorneys were more likely to disqualify potential jurors who had been crime victims, worked in law enforcement or had friends or family in law enforcement.
- Prosecutors were more likely to disqualify those who are single; defense attorneys were more likely to strike those who are married.
- Prosecutors strike people in blue-collar jobs at higher rates; the defense strikes people in white-collar jobs at higher rates.
Defense attorneys and prosecutors say their choices are not based on skin color.
Defense lawyer JR Cook said that if he prefers blacks over whites, he's trying to put some people on the jury who may understand his client's perspective.
"When was the last time you got rousted for being white?" he asked. "I'm not saying it's right. It's called reality."
In 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an Ohio case that race bias by defense lawyers violated jurors' rights. That followed a ruling six years previously that barred prosecutors from discriminating against jurors on the basis of race.
Peter Barrett, president of the Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, criticized prosecutors for rejecting black prospective jurors at a higher rate than whites. However, he said that defense rejection of white potential jurors at a higher rate than blacks does not prove that defense attorneys are guilty of discrimination.
"You need to remember that jury selection is not picking jurors so much as eliminating jurors," said Barrett, who has practiced criminal law for 11 years. "And I tend not to eliminate people of color as often."
Timothy Bray, an assistant professor of criminology at the University of Texas at Dallas, said that race bias as shown by the strike rates could in a "weird" way prove the system is working.
The pool of prospective jurors should reflect a cross-section of the community, not the defendant's population, he said.
"These strike rates look alarming, but remember, the defense and the prosecutors have different goals in mind. To that end, one might imagine that the defense attorney has a little more of a stake in the race of the jurors. He has someone sitting next to him that is of a certain race," Bray said. "The dynamics of the defense is completely different from dynamics of the prosecution."