Details: The Supreme Court has repeatedly asserted that a defendant is not entitled to a jury composed in whole or in part of persons of his own race. Although these rulings establish that states are not obligated to use racially mixed juries, they do not prohibit states from doing so. In fact, a number of policymakers and legal scholars have proposed reforms that use racial criteria to promote racial diversity on American jury. Some have suggested that the names of majority race jurors be removed from the jury list (thus ensuring a larger proportion of racial minorities); others have suggested that a certain number of seats on each jury be set aside for racial.
Introduction to racial mixed juries:
Minartha Minow (1990) disclosed that discrimination is inbuilt in American society from the history. The scenario is really disastrous when a black defendant faces the jury of whites. The conviction of guilt for black and eviction of guilt for white by white jury present really devastating social issues. He also concluded that efforts to mitigate these effects were really slow. In our world racial differences only don’t matter but also the racial inequalities in terms of wealth, power, status etc. This injustice give rise to the need of racially mixed juries.
Q: How would you justify these reforms to a state legislature?
Ans: Background of Racial Discrimination:
From many previous examples there are enough arguments to justify these racial mixed jury reforms. Differences between blacks and whites in America exists from very long times and it causes many ethical issues like assaults and campaigns against state. Many social and ethical issues arise because of the racial backgrounds and profiling (Annabelle Lever, 2010). Minority groups form small subcultures which give rise to criminal acts and gangs building to mitigate the
References: Annabelle Lever, (2010), Treating People as Equals: Ethical obligations and the composition of Juries, The Journal of Ethics, retrieved from: http://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/60811.pdf Fukurai, (1993), Race and the Jury: Racial Disenfranchisement and the Search for Justice Jennifer McNulty, (2003), Racially mixed juries would provide ‘checks and balances’ in criminal justice system, retrieved from: http://currents.ucsc.edu/03-04/10-20/juries.html Martha Minow, Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion and American Law (Cornell University Press, 1990) Sommers, S. R. (2006). On racial diversity and group decision making: Identifying multiple effects of racial composition on jury deliberations