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What is your verdict? It's the economy, stupid.

By Shawn Matlock

Scott Greenfield posts today about the effect of the economy on juries. His post comes on the heels of a post by Anne Reed at Deliberations that discussed the Sixth Circuit case of Smith v. Berguis. In Smith, the court overturned a Michigan murder conviction because the manner in which the jury was selected systematically and disproportionately excluded African Americans. The essence of the case is that the judge in the particular court was apparently too nice. He let people out of jury service because it was too hard. Seems like a nice thing to do, right? I mean rarely do you find someone who actually wants to be on a jury. The problem with this practice was that by doing so, it was much more likely that African Americans would be excused from the potential jury pool than not...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Matlock Blog on September 26, 2008 (boomark / email).