Courts demand proof of discriminatory intent, not mere racial imbalance, in jury challenges

Evidence

Numerous defendants have questioned the verdicts rendered by juries because of concerns that racial bias affected the jury decisions. One early example involved the case of the “Scottsboro Boys” (Norris v. Alabama, 1935). In the face of convincing exculpatory evidence, an all-White jury convicted all nine Black defendants of sexually assaulting a White woman. The Supreme Court eventually overturned the conviction, and it became clear that the court would no longer tolerate the total exclusion of minorities from juries. Although defendants’ concerns about jury diversity persist, courts may not always rule in their favor. In Snyder v. Louisiana (2008), for example, Allen Snyder petitioned the court to overturn his conviction by an all-White jury. His argument focused on the fact that five of the thirty-six jurors on the panel from which his jurors were selected were Black. When Snyder appealed his conviction, the court ruled that he had not sufficiently demonstrated that the prosecution was motivated by racial bias in their jury-selection decisions. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 836

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to the reader’s research on the sincerity/conviction vs measured-bias gap — the prosecution’s claimed non-racial rationale for strikes versus observed disparate impact. — connects to: Since 1976 courts require proof of individual intent to find race discrimination — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 326; Title VI regulations allow discrimination suits on discriminatory effect while the statute demands intent — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 1007; Washington v. Davis made discriminatory intent a prerequisite for equal-protection race claims. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 1038 (+1 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 836