Although the Supreme Court struck down race-based strikes of poten­tial jurors more than two decades ago in Batson v. Kentucky, the deci­sion has fall­en short of its goal. For exam­ple, in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, a recent study has revealed that poten­tial black jurors are struck three times as often as white jurors in the parish. This does not include the jurors struck for being unable to fol­low death penal­ty law by the judge. A Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center review of 390 felony jury tri­als in the parish from 1994 to 2002 found that none of the 20 mur­der tri­als in the area, which has a pop­u­la­tion that is 23% black, since the Batson deci­sion has had a pro­por­tion­ate­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive num­ber of black jurors. A clos­er look at 18 Jefferson Parish mur­der tri­als for which the race of jurors is avail­able found that 10 had no black mem­bers, sev­en had one black mem­ber, and one had two black jurors. ​“Not one gets to what should be the aver­age,” said Richard Bourke, the act­ing direc­tor of the Center, who notes that you might expect to see about 3 black jurors on each 12-mem­ber pan­el.

According to a New York Times col­umn by Adam Liptak, this pat­tern of racial bias may have result­ed in a death sen­tence for Allen Snyder, who was tried for mur­der by an all-white jury in Jefferson Parish. In Snyder’s case, pros­e­cu­tors were influ­en­tial in hav­ing all nine poten­tial black jurors removed, four with cause and five uti­liz­ing peremp­to­ry strikes. Snyder has now filed a sec­ond appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court rais­ing ques­tions about the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of his tri­al. In response to his first appeal, the Justices sent his case back to the Louisiana Supreme Court, order­ing the judges to take a hard look at how jury selec­tion had been con­duct­ed. After a sec­ond review of the case, the Louisiana Supreme Court again ruled against Snyder.

At the time of the Batson deci­sion, Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote that the rul­ing would not end the preva­lence of race-based jury selec­tion, while an end to peremp­to­ry strikes alto­geth­er could.
(New York Times, June 4, 2007). See Race.

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