Entries tagged with “Justice Thurgood Marshall”

Feb 25, 2026

Black History: Forty Years After Supreme Court Upheld ​“Death Qualification” of Juries, Data Consistently Shows Disproportionate Racial Exclusion

The Constitution man­dates that juries be drawn from a​“fair cross-sec­­tion” of the com­mu­ni­ty. Yet pub­lic opin­ion polls show that a sub­stan­tial por­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty oppos­es the death penal­ty. How, then, can the gov­ern­ment seat a jury that will fair­ly decide whether to impose the death penal­ty *and* pro­tect a defendant’s con­sti­tu­tion­al jury rights? The legal system’s long­stand­ing answer to this ques­tion is a pro­ce­dure called​“death qual­i­fi­ca­tion,” which…