Legal Commentary

Prosecutors Disciplined For Striking Blacks From Jury Panel

By TChris

Here's something you don't see every day:

Saying they were negligent and incompetent when they struck seven blacks from the jury pool in a recent murder trial, Harris County [Texas] District Attorney Pat Lykos castigated two of her prosecutors Thursday, docking their pay and removing them from trial work.

Lykos said the prosecutors were negligent when they removed every black member of the jury panel in the murder prosecution of a black defendant. The prosecutors claim they were "shocked" when they looked at the dozen jurors who made the final cut and saw no black faces. Lykos said the prosecutors were merely incompetent, not racist, in their decision to strike all the black panel members. "If I thought for a moment that there were racial motives, they would have been fired,” she said.

But what are "racial motives"? [more ...]

The defense attorneys who represent Ricky Whitfield disagreed ... saying that Donnelly and Newaz relied on stereotypes — that whites are more conservative and blacks are more liberal — to exclude the black panelists.

“It’s the stereotype associated with being black that caused the prejudice in the first place, which is the nature of racism, it’s the basis for it,” attorney Jacquelyn Carpenter said.

When asked to respond to a defense challenge to the prosecutors' exercise of their strikes, "Donnelly and Newaz told the judge that the black panelists were indecisive about whether the criminal justice system should punish or rehabilitate." The judge didn't buy it, given that some white panelists expressed the same indecision but were left on the jury. The judge dismissed the jury and set a new trial date.

Even if she can't bring herself to find a racial motivation in the decision to strike all the black panelists, Lykos deserves praise for disciplining the prosecutors. As Mark Bennett, president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, said:

“It’s an encouraging sign that (Lykos) is interested in trying to make things right and trying to make the system work fairly for all of the citizens of Harris County, not just the rich, white ones.”

Can't argue with that.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 27, 2009 (boomark / email).