Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Lethal Injection

Criminal Law

: Lethal Injection

Study Finds Blacks Blocked From Southern Juries

By SHAILA DEWANIn late April in a courthouse in Madison County, Ala., a prosecutor was asked to explain why he had struck 11 of 14 black potential jurors in a capital murder case.The district attorney, Robert Broussard, said one had seemed ?arrogant? and ?pretty vocal.? In another woman, he said he ?detected hostility.?Mr. Broussard also questioned the ?sophistication? of a former Army sergeant, a forklift operator with three years of college, a cafeteria manager, an assembly-line worker and a retired Department of Defense program analyst.The analyst, he said, ?did not appear to be sophisticated to us in her questionnaire, in that she spelled Wal-Mart, as one of her previous employers, as Wal-marts.?Arguments like these were used for years to keep blacks off juries in the segregationist South, systematically denying justice to black defendants and victims...continue to full post

Full post as published by Lethal Injection on July 02, 2010 (boomark / email).