Abstract

Excerpted From: Claire Austin, Racial Discrimination in Jury Selection:  The Urgent Need for Sixth Amendment Protections for Black Capital Defendants, 25 Marquette Benefits & Social Welfare Law Review 59 (Fall, 2023) (176 Footnotes) (Full Document)

Between the Summer of 2020 and early 2021, as the Presidency turned over from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, the nation experienced the unprecedented execution of thirteen federal prisoners. Orlando Cordia Hall was one of the persons sentenced to death amidst the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of the 2020 election. Hall was forty-nine years old at the time of his death; however, he was in a prison for a crime committed when he was just twenty-three years old. This means that at the time of his execution, Hall had spent more than half of his life behind bars. What is more alarming is that Hall, a black man, was found guilty by an all-white jury.

In 1995, Hall was one member of a group charged with kidnapping resulting in death of a minor after a marijuana deal had gone wrong. The prosecutor who tried Hall's case removed all of the black jurors from the jury panel. A few years later in a different case the Supreme Court would find this same prosecutor to have removed jurors based solely on their race. This is one of many jarring examples of the unconstitutional treatment of black capital defendants.

This Comment argues that the Supreme Court decision Holland v. Illinois 493 U.S. 474 (1990), which held that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury made up of a fair cross-section of the community does not prevent prosecutors from using peremptory strikes to dismiss black jurors, must be reversed. A reversal will provide meaningful relief for black capital defendants whose sentences were decided by an all-white jury, and will replace the current, ineffective tools of relief for these defendants. The Court has interpreted protections against jury discrimination to fall squarely under the Fourteenth Amendment and takes the firm stance that the Sixth Amendment does not guarantee a right to a representative jury. This framework does not work in practice as black capital defendants continue to be subject to rampant discrimination in jury selection.

Part I of this Comment provides a historical background of discrimination in jury selection and its disproportionately harmful effects on black capital defendants and gives an overview of Holland v. Illinois. Part II of this Comment analyzes the Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury made up of a fair cross-section of the community and explores the relationship between these two components. Finally, Part III of this Comment proposes an extension of the interpretation of the Sixth Amendment and an accountability mechanism for prosecutors who abuse their power to dismiss jurors based on race.

[. . .]

Racial discrimination is pervasive throughout the entire justice system at every step of jury trials. The people most susceptible to this discrimination are black capital defendants. A critical part of capital defendants' trial is jury selection, which has become rampant with bias that go tolerated or undetected. The peremptory strike is one of the methods most widely used to perpetuate racial discrimination against venire jurors. In Holland the Supreme Court had the opportunity to make strides towards ending racial discrimination in jury selection; however, it ignored the rampant issue and further separating the issues of peremptory challenges and the Sixth Amendment. By extending the Sixth Amendment, defendants, specifically black capital defendants, will have greater protection from racial discrimination in jury selection and courts will produce more equitable outcomes.

Claire Austin is a May 2024 Juris Doctor Candidate at Marquette University Law School and serves as a Comment Editor for the Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review.