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Study alleges J.P. prosecutors
keeping African Americans off juries
(Tuesday, September 23, 2003,)
http://www.WWLTV.com
A new
study released by the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center alleges that
Jefferson Parish prosecutors are unfairly keeping African Americans off
of juries.
The study stems
from the 1995 murder conviction of a Marrero man that was overturned
last year because the State Supreme Court ruled that the Jefferson
Parish prosecutor in that case struck potential jurors simply because of
the color of their skin.
The report accuses
the parish District Attorney’s office of consistently striking potential
jurors over a ten-year period, and using race as a sole disqualifier.
According to the
study, African Americans are struck from juries at three times the rate
of their white counterparts.
“The prosecutors,
it could be argued, are arguing for racial verdicts that are white
favored verdicts against the black population of Jefferson Parish,” said
Richard Bourke of the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center. “What you need
is an even distribution across the community. We're a democracy and it's
our strength. If you get an even distribution of people throughout the
whole of the Jefferson Parish community you might get some fair and
impartial justice”
Jefferson Parish
District Attorney Paul Connick called the allegations unfounded.
He suggests people
with political agenda, namely those opposed to the death penalty, have
published the report.
“Any time someone
raises an allegation, especially a decision made by this office based on
race, we certainly take that seriously," said Connick. “But I know this
office and I resent the allegation that we make decisions in this office
based on race. We make our decisions on the cases we prosecuted strictly
on the basis of the facts and evidence presented.”
In court
proceedings on Tuesday, a judge denied a defense motion to acquit the
man convicted of murdering two people based on this study.
However it's possible the Jefferson Parish District
Attorney’s office could still come under review as the report will be
forwarded to the State Attorney General’s office.
Jeff juries formed unfairly; It says
too many black people omitted
(Times-Picayune (New
Orleans, LA) September 24, 2003)
The Jefferson Parish district attorney's office
intentionally dismisses potential black jurors at a much higher rate
than their white counterparts to manipulate the chances of convicting
minority defendants and to lessen the influence of black jurors in
trials, a nonprofit New Orleans lawyers' group said Tuesday.
Based on a study of more than 500 trials and about 23,000 jurors from
1994 to 2002, the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center found that the
district attorney's office "strikes" potential black jurors from jury
pools at a rate more than three times than that at which they dismiss
potential white jurors and that in 80 percent of trials there are not
enough black jurors to affect the verdict.
"There is clearly a race problem here," said assistance center lawyer
Richard Bourke at a news conference he called Tuesday to address what he
described as rampant "black striking" in Jefferson's courtrooms.
District Attorney Paul Connick Jr., who was first elected to the job in
1996, vehemently denied that race plays a role in his office's legal
decisions and called the accusations politically motivated by lawyers
opposed to capital punishment.
LCAC is a law office that receives the bulk of its financing from the
state to represent indigent defendants in capital cases.
Conviction overturned
Bourke's news conference came less than a hour after a court hearing in
which center lawyers sought to have the charges dismissed in the case of
Edward Harris of Marrero, a black man who in December 1995 was convicted
of murder and sentenced to death in the 1994 killings of two Harvey
residents.
In June 2002, the Louisiana Supreme Court overturned Harris' conviction
and sent the case back to state court after ruling that a black man who
was a potential juror had been wrongly excluded from the proceedings.
At Tuesday's hearing, attorneys presented their case to Judge Greg
Guidry, who denied their motion, saying other alleged misconduct by the
prosecutor did not warrant such an "extreme remedy" as calling off the
Nov. 3 retrial.
The group said Tuesday that Caren Morgan, the original prosecutor in the
case, withheld evidence from the defense team that would have been
favorable to Harris and failed to correct knowingly false testimony.
Morgan has since left the district attorney's office.
The Supreme Court's ruling did not address any allegations of misconduct
outside the exclusion of the black juror.
Prosecutor Frank Brindisi is now handling the case. Bourke was called as
a witness during the hearing, but Brindisi opted not to cross-examine
him, a move Bourke said highlighted the office's reluctance to delve
into the study.
Brindisi accused defense attorneys of "window-dressing" the matter with
racial issues instead of focusing on why black jurors have been
dismissed or on Harris' guilt or innocence.
Reasons for dismissal
Potential jurors can be turned away from a case because of their
relationship with law enforcement officials, because of personal
hardships that could interfere with jury duty or because court officials
determine that they could not be fair to the defendant, Connick said.
Since 1997, his office has prosecuted about 1,300 jury trials, and the
Harris case is the only one to be overturned because a juror was
illegally dismissed, said Connick, who questioned how the center
compiled its data.
"They're just throwing the numbers out and making the inference that
it's all racially motivated," he said, adding that during his tenure he
has never received a complaint from judge or defense attorney about
racist jury selection. "We don't operate that way."
Initially, the center looked at 390 cases, including 264 cases of
12-member juries, and 126 cases of six-member juries. Bourke contends
that his data, analyzed by a Tulane University professor, shows that
prosecutors turn away 55 percent of potential black jurors but only 16
percent of those who are white.
With a population that is about 23 percent black, only 6 percent of
Jefferson Parish trials should have juries with no black people on them,
Bourke said, adding that the actual figure is about 22 percent.
In most trials, it takes a majority rule to deliver a verdict, except in
capital cases, which require a unanimous vote.
With that in mind, in 80 percent of trials there are too few black
jurors to impact the verdict, assuming that the black jurors would vote
differently about the case than their white counterparts, Bourke said,
adding that the study also shows it is nearly statistically impossible
for such results to come about without prosecutor manipulation.
"The evidence is overwhelming," said Joe Cook, president of the American
Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, who joined Bourke at the news
conference. "I think it's time for a change."
Clerk of Court Jon Gegenheimer said the initial first steps of picking
jurors are completely random, based on a juror identification numbers
assigned to voter registration, state identification cards and driver's
licenses.
Once inside the courtroom, prosecutors and defense attorneys have a
specific number of "peremptory challenges" they can make to exclude
certain jurors.
Lawyers do not have to disclose the reason for such challenges,
Gegenheimer said. He said such nondisclosure leaves a hole in the system
but said judges and attorneys can challenge jury decisions that they
feel are unfair or illegal.
Study: Prosecutors discriminate; Jefferson Parish
jury pools allegedly eliminated blacks.
(Associated Press, September 24, 2003)
NEW ORLEANS (AP) —— A new study alleging that
Jefferson Parish prosecutors have for years improperly eliminated blacks
from jury pools was presented for the first time Tuesday in a decade-old
double murder case slated for a retrial.
Defense attorney Stephen Singer predicted the study would apply to
numerous other cases in the largely white, conservative New Orleans
suburb.
State District Judge Greg Guidry was unmoved by the study and other
arguments that the prosecutor in the initial trial may have improperly
withheld evidence that would have helped in the defense of Edward
Harris. Guidry denied a pretrial defense motion to acquit Harris,
essentially rejecting arguments that prosecutors used outrageous and
discriminatory conduct to avoid an acquittal.
Singer said his team of attorneys will appeal Guidry’s ruling to the
state 5th Circuit Court of Appeal in about a week.
Harris is facing a retrial in the case after the Supreme Court found in
2002 that the prosecutor in the 1995 trial, Caren Morgan, used her
allotment of automatic juror dismissals —— called preemptory strikes ——
to remove a black man from the jury pool because of his race.
Harris, who was sentenced to death after his conviction, has pleaded
innocent, claiming self-defense in the 1994 killings of Tamyra Frazier
and Mister Gordon in Marrero.
Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, Singer, who works with the
anti-death penalty Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center, decided to have
the center try to determine whether there was evidence of similar
discrimination in other cases in the parish.
The study reviewed the racial background of 23,000 potential jurors for
more than 500 trials during the past decade.
The figures indicate that blacks, relative to the black population of
Jefferson Parish, are three times more likely than whites to be
disqualified from serving on juries in criminal trials. The result, the
study says, is that an overwhelming number of juries have a percentage
of blacks that is significantly lower than the percentage of blacks in
the parish.
About 20 percent of criminal juries have had no black members at all,
even though more than 23 percent of the parish's residents are black,
the study said. It found that 80 percent of Jefferson Parish juries
included two or fewer black members, which for black defendants would be
about the same as facing an all-white jury in all cases except those
involving the death penalty, where unanimous juries are required for a
conviction.
Richard Bourke, a spokesman for the crisis center, said the study shows
that Jefferson Parish prosecutors “shouldn't be allowed to have
preemptory strikes because they can't be trusted —— they misuse them.”
Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick, who was not in office
when Harris went to trial, called the study's conclusions unfounded.
““That’s their statistician that they hired and statistics can say
whatever you want,”” Connick said. ““We don’t know if those numbers are
accurate.””
Connick said Singer’s team, which includes anti-death penalty activist
Clyde Stafford Smith, is really trying to ratchet up public opposition
to capital punishment by portraying Jefferson Parish as a place where a
minority defendant can't get a fair trial.
““There's no question these defense attorneys have a political agenda,””
Connick said. ““I have no quarrel with individuals who are anti-death
penalty. It's a very serious issue. It's not something we celebrate
because it's a tragedy on all fronts, but at the same time, we have to
deal with cases as we get them based on the facts and evidence.””
Connick noted there have been 1,300 jury trials in the seven years since
he has taken office, with only one was overturned because of a minority
being excluded from a jury.
The statistical analysis in the study was performed by Tulane professor
J.A. Devine of the Center for applied Social Research.
In Jeff courts, a jury of your (white) peers
(Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA) September 28, 2003)
Before he became a crooked judge, Ronnie Bodenheimer rejected potential
black jurors more often than any other assistant district attorney in
Jefferson Parish.
That was no mean feat, for the competition was intense. Statistics show
that, since 1994, Jefferson Parish prosecutors have used their
peremptory challenges during jury selection to get rid of 55 percent of
the black people in the pool, and 16 percent of the white people.
The Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center, which compiled the statistics,
calls this a "shocking revelation." But if Jefferson is, as the LCAC
suggests, "Louisiana's most notoriously racist parish," disparate voir
dire rejection rates should not come as a surprise.
District Attorney Paul Connick denies that race is a factor when his
assistants decide to show a prospective juror the door. He accuses the
LCAC, which represents indigent defendants, of "just throwing the
numbers out" and falsely inferring a racist motive in order to advance
its anti-death penalty cause.
Connick points out that Edward Harris is the only defendant on his watch
to have his conviction overturned by the state Supreme Court because
prosecutors improperly removed a prospective black juror. But that
doesn't mean it didn't happen in other cases, because proving a racist
motive for a peremptory challenge in usually impossible. Most
prosecutors are smart enough to come up with some plausible, and legal,
pretext.
Not in Harris' case, however. Then-Assistant DA Caren Morgan explained
to the trial judge that she was excluding "a single black male with no
children," because she didn't "want him relating to the defendant more
so than he would the state's part of the case." Harris now awaits a
retrial.
Morgan ranked fifth on the LCAC's list of prosecutors using peremptory
challenges against black candidates. She removed 64 percent of them,
while Bodenheimer rattled along at a rate of 77 percent.
Morgan may have been the only one candid, or dumb, enough to reveal her
real motivation, but it is impossible to believe that others did not
have race in mind when barring the door to blacks.
There has been no suggestion that Connick instructs his staff to use
peremptory challenges disproportionately against blacks. But what goes
on in the courtroom, or inside the heads of prosecutors, he cannot
always know.
Misuse of peremptory challenges will no doubt remain widespread until
they are abolished, as they have been in other countries, and
prospective jurors can be removed only for cause. We are halfway there
in America -- else Harris's conviction would never have been overturned.
A challenge cannot be truly preemptive unless a prosecutor or defense
attorney can remove a prospective juror for any reason, worthy or
otherwise, and never be called on to explain.
That's how it was for centuries. The American method of selecting juries
has its roots in the English common law, and we still use the antique
terms, so that the "peremptory challenge" comes into effect when
"veniremen" appear for a hearing at which they are required to tell the
truth -- "voir dire" in Anglo French.
The unfettered right to give a prospective juror the heave-ho survived
long after the 14th Amendment established the
right to equal protection, and only in fairly recent years did the U.S.
Supreme Court come up with the contradictory notion of a peremptory
challenge with conditions attached.
Using a peremptory challenge for reasons of race and gender is now
verboten, as it no doubt should be. But, as the LCAC study demonstrates,
bigotry continues to defy the Supreme Court in Jefferson Parish. And,
even if Jefferson Parish deserves the "notoriously racist" tag, it
cannot be the only jurisdiction where that is true.
The theory behind peremptory challenges is that they produce fairer
juries because both prosecutors and defense attorneys can exclude
candidates they instinctively suspect of being hostile to their case.
Perhaps it is even more important to banish racism and sexism, but it is
idle to pretend that we can have it both ways merely by adopting the
Humpty Dumpty theory of semantics. The peremptory challenge has been
weakened, but one of these days the courts may have to put it out of its
misery.
(JG)
Re: "In Jeff courts, a jury of your
(white) peers," Other Opinions, Sept. 28.
(Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA) October 2, 2003)
Much is being said of peremptory challenges being used by the Jefferson
Parish District Attorney's Office. Some are calling it a method to
exclude African-Americans from selection.
I have not heard anyone mention that the defense is entitled to the same
number of peremptory challenges as the prosecutor.
As a former district attorney's investigator with the Orleans Parish
DA's Office for 11 years, I witnessed numerous jury trials where a
defense attorney excluded not only white potential jurors, but also
excluded potential jurors based on factors such as employment,
education, neighborhood, ethnic background, etc.
The prosecution as well as the defense is obligated to adequately
represent its client to the fullest, using every means possible within
the law.
The use of peremptory challenges is a legitimate tool for both sides to
use, and until the law is changed neither side should be criticized for
using it.
(JLC, Covington) |
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