Florida Study Documents Disproportionate Exclusion of Black Jurors in Jacksonville Death Penalty Cases

Two-thirds of Black women and more than half of Black men have been struck from jury ser­vice in Duval County death penal­ty cas­es, more than dou­ble the rate at which white prospec­tive jurors are exclud­ed, a study of cap­i­tal jury selec­tion in the Florida coun­ty has found.

The study, Racialized Impacts of Death Disqualification in Duval County, Florida, con­duct­ed by University of Central Florida crim­i­nal jus­tice pro­fes­sor Dr. Jacinta M. Gau, was the cen­ter­piece of a chal­lenge to the county’s cap­i­tal-case jury selec­tion prac­tices brought by lawyers for the ACLU on behalf of Dennis Glover (pic­tured, cen­ter) in his cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing tri­al. Glover was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sen­tenced to death by a Duval County judge in 2015 fol­low­ing a non-unan­i­mous sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tion by his jury. On October 21, 2022, State Attorney Melissa Nelson with­drew the death penal­ty from Glover’s case, avoid­ing a hear­ing on the jury issue, and the court resen­tenced Glover to life without parole.

Dr. Gau reviewed tran­scripts and oth­er mate­ri­als relat­ing to 1,042 prospec­tive jurors called for jury duty in the 12 cap­i­tal cas­es tried in Duval County (Jacksonville) from 2010 through 2018 to deter­mine the extent to which the com­bi­na­tion of death-qual­i­fi­ca­tion and dis­cre­tionary jury strikes affect­ed the com­po­si­tion of death penal­ty juries in the coun­ty. She found that the prac­tice of ​“death qual­i­fi­ca­tion” — the removal of poten­tial jurors from ser­vice in a cap­i­tal case because of their expressed oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty — ​“dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly exclud­ed peo­ple of col­or, and Black peo­ple … in par­tic­u­lar.” The prosecution’s exer­cise of dis­cre­tionary strikes ​“also exclude a size­able per­cent­age of Black venire per­sons,” Gau found, with Black women again the group most like­ly to be exclud­ed, fol­lowed close­ly by Black men. 

Discriminatory jury selec­tion was just one of sev­er­al major issues pre­sent­ed in Glover’s case. He has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence in the mur­der of his neigh­bor, Sandra Allen. His lawyers say that school records and IQ tests demon­strate that he is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and there­fore should nev­er have been eli­gi­ble for a death sen­tence. His 2015 death sen­tence was imposed after a 10 – 2 jury rec­om­men­da­tion, but it was over­turned in 2017 after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida’s sen­tenc­ing scheme. For five years, Nelson reject­ed Glover’s requests to waive the death penal­ty, insist­ing that she would only do so if he admit­ted his guilt. 

Gau’s study found that the death qual­i­fi­ca­tion process removed jurors of col­or at sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er rates than white jurors. 33.8% of Black poten­tial jurors were exclud­ed by death qual­i­fi­ca­tion, along with 38.0% of oth­er jurors of col­or, while only 15.5% of white jurors were exclud­ed. While Black jurors com­prised 25.9% of the gen­er­al venire, they con­sti­tut­ed 39.3% of those dis­qual­i­fied because of their views against the death penal­ty. Likewise, oth­er jurors of col­or (Latinx, Asian, or oth­er race) com­prised 8.9% of the over­all jury pool, they con­sti­tut­ed 15.2% of those dis­qual­i­fied because of oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. By con­trast, white jurors com­prised 65.4% of the entire venire, but only 45.5% of death-qualification strikes.

When death-dis­qual­i­fied jurors were ana­lyzed to exclude those jurors whose answers to jury selec­tion ques­tions revealed oth­er legit­i­mate bases to strike them, the racial dis­par­i­ties became even broad­er. ​“Approximately 39% of Black venire per­sons who are ready, will­ing, and able to serve are banned from doing so by the death-dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion rule,” Gau found. “ A full 43% of peo­ple of oth­er races (Hispanic, Asian, and so forth) are barred from ser­vice by the rule. This sits in con­trast to only 17% of White venire per­sons for whom death-penal­ty oppo­si­tion pos­es a bar­ri­er to jury service.” 

The com­bi­na­tion of death qual­i­fi­ca­tion and pros­e­cu­tion dis­cre­tionary strikes even more dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly dis­en­fran­chised Black jurors and was par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry against Black women. “[F]ully two thirds of Black women oth­er­wise eli­gi­ble, qual­i­fied, and will­ing to serve were exclud­ed by the com­bi­na­tion of death qual­i­fi­ca­tion and pros­e­cu­tor peremp­to­ry strikes, as were 55% of Black men,” Gau wrote.

The racial dis­pro­por­tion­al­i­ty of the exclu­sions of Black jurors is mag­ni­fied even fur­ther in the jury room because African Americans are already a minor­i­ty voice — rep­re­sent­ing about 30% of Duval County’s pop­u­la­tion — and are already under­rep­re­sent­ed in the pool of poten­tial jurors. Gau found that African Americans com­prised 25.9% of the gen­er­al venire but 22.6% of those select­ed to serve as jurors or alter­nate jurors. The rep­re­sen­ta­tion of oth­er jurors of col­or fell from 8.9% to 6.4%. White jurors, on the oth­er hand, moved from 65.3% of the gen­er­al venire to 70.9% of those ultimately empaneled. 

Gau’s results are sim­i­lar to those in a recent study of death qual­i­fi­ca­tion in North Carolina. Researchers from Michigan State University stud­ied jury selec­tion in Wake County (Raleigh) from 2008 to 2019. The researchers found sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence of racial dis­par­i­ties in death qual­i­fi­ca­tion, with Black poten­tial jurors removed ​“at 2.16 times the rate of their white coun­ter­parts.” That research was sub­mit­ted as part of a chal­lenge to death qual­i­fi­ca­tion on behalf of Brandon Xavier Hill, who is fac­ing cap­i­tal charges in Wake County.

Studies have shown that more diverse juries ren­der more accu­rate ver­dicts. Until 2016, Florida’s cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing sys­tem per­mit­ted judges to impose death sen­tences based up non-unan­i­mous jury votes for death, fur­ther dilut­ing — and in some cas­es silenc­ing — minor­i­ty view­points. Thirty peo­ple in Florida — by far the most in the nation — have been exon­er­at­ed since 1973 after hav­ing been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death, one exon­er­a­tion for every 3.3 peo­ple put to death in the state. Of the 24 exon­er­a­tions for which the jury vote is known, 22 (91.7%) involved judi­cial deci­sions to over­ride jury votes for life or nonunan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tions for death.