Article of Interest: New Equal Justice Initiative Report Shines a Spotlight on Historic Patterns of Jury Discrimination and the Role of Non-Diverse Juries in Wrongful Convictions

A new report from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), Unreliable Verdicts: Racial Bias and Wrongful Convictions, explores the his­to­ry of racial bias in jury selec­tion in the United States, includ­ing the last 40 years of racial­ly-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pre­emp­to­ry jury strikes, and high­lights the grow­ing body of research show­ing that jury bias is reduced and the delib­er­a­tive process enhanced when juries are more diverse. Looking at the pool of doc­u­ment­ed death penal­ty exon­er­a­tions, EJI dives deep into a dozen of the 200 exon­er­a­tions of death row inmates nation­wide, includ­ing Joseph ​“Shabaka” Green Brown (FL), Lawrence Adams (MA), and James ​“Bo” Cochran (AL), and the well-known case of Curtis Flowers (MS) — all of which were decid­ed by non­di­verse juries. Turning the spot­light even brighter on Alabama, EJI exam­ines the indi­vid­u­als cur­rent­ly on Alabama’s death row to ana­lyze how often those con­vic­tions were reached by non­di­verse juries to deter­mine whether the ver­dicts in those cas­es were reli­able enough to justify death.

“Other than vot­ing,” the U.S. Supreme Court explained in 2019, ​“serv­ing on a jury is the most sub­stan­tial oppor­tu­ni­ty that most cit­i­zens have to par­tic­i­pate in the demo­c­ra­t­ic process.” The 1986 U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion in Batson v. Kentucky estab­lished pro­ce­dures to cor­rect and pre­vent racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selec­tion by requir­ing lawyers to pro­vide race-neu­tral rea­sons for exclud­ing jurors if racial bias is sus­pect­ed. However, as Justice Thurgood Marshall pre­dict­ed in his con­cur­ring opin­ion in Batson, pros­e­cu­tors have learned to dis­guise race-moti­vat­ed strikes behind seem­ing­ly neu­tral expla­na­tions. The Equal Justice Initiative’s analy­sis of 122 Alabama death row cas­es reveals trou­bling pat­terns: more than half (52.5%) of the cas­es involved juries with Black under­rep­re­sen­ta­tion rel­a­tive to coun­ty demo­graph­ics. More than a third (39.3%) had juries with one or no Black jurors, includ­ing 23 cas­es (18.9%) with all-white juries. These dis­par­i­ties are strik­ing, giv­en that Black peo­ple rep­re­sent about 25% of Alabama’s pop­u­la­tion but 50% of its death row.

Research con­sis­tent­ly shows diverse juries delib­er­ate more thor­ough­ly and reach more accu­rate ver­dicts. A 2012 Florida study found all-white juries con­vict­ed Black defen­dants at high­er rates than white defen­dants, but includ­ing Black jurors elim­i­nat­ed this dis­par­i­ty. Curtis Flowers is one of the wrong­ful con­vic­tion cas­es high­light­ed in EJI’s report where Black jurors were severe­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed. Mr. Flowers was tried six times in Mississippi and in four of those tri­als with either none or one Black juror, Mr. Flowers was con­vict­ed; in two oth­er tri­als that had more diverse juries, delib­er­a­tions end­ed in mis­tri­als. After the United States Supreme Court found ille­gal dis­crim­i­na­tion and ruled in his favor in 2019, all charges were dropped, and Mr. Flowers was released from prison in 2020.

Alabama, despite rank­ing 24^th in pop­u­la­tion, ranks 6^th in exe­cu­tions since 1976 (79), 4^th for death row pop­u­la­tion size, 3^rd for num­ber of new death sen­tences in 2024 (4), and 1^st for death sen­tences per capi­ta in 2024. In addi­tion, Alabama’s Court of Criminal Appeals has made it hard­er to chal­lenge jury dis­crim­i­na­tion by exclud­ing claims of racial bias in jury selec­tion (Batson claims) from ​“plain error” review of capital cases.