Jury duty

Racial quotas do not work well in federal courts

Detroit's U.S. District Court agreed early this month to discontinue its policy of removing all people accept African Americans from jury pools in order to increase the proportion of black jurors hearing federal court cases. The decision comes after the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled on Feb. 23 that the district court's method of racial balancing violates legal guidelines. The six-year-old practice, used only in Southeastern Michigan, sought to bring the percentage of black jurors to reflect the African American component of the district at large. Though Detroit's federal judges have yet to establish an alternative method of creating a jury wheel that represents a fair cross section of the community, they are right in discarding the old policy.

The contest stems from an appeal by four men who, found guilty by a Saginaw court in a marijuana smuggling case, questioned the district court's method of jury selection. The appeals court sided with the appellants, stating that the selection process violated both the Jury Selection and Service Act and the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment.

Though the credibility of the U.S. legal system rests on Americans' belief that a true body of peers determines case outcomes, eastern Michigan's well-intentioned Jury Selection Plan failed to truly establish such a representative body. By using race as the sole factor in discarding jury candidates prior to counsel-mediated selections, the court, in effect, eliminated the randomness essential to selecting an unbiased cross section of the community. Increasing the homogeneity of jury pools, the selection plan also diminished the likelihood that the juries would mirror the values of the general Eastern Michigan community.

The system failed primarily because it did not make similar efforts to establish equitable representation for members of all racial and ethnic groups. Latino/a defendants had complained that while the court made efforts to appease the black community, it did not enact plans to balance the representation of other minorities. Consequently, the court failed to offer equal opportunity to all its defendants. Even if it had endeavored to establish similar plans for all underrepresented groups in eastern Michigan through the same "subtraction" method. Clearly, the jury selection policy was a complicated route toward achieving fair representation.

Random-draw selection - the standard method used for finding jury candidates - ideally should turn up a jury that is more or less representative of the district's population, including its underrepresented groups. Noting this statistical phenomenon, the district court should have sought to remedy flaws within its random-draw procedures before tampering with jury pools. But instead of refining a selection process that has become national protocol, the court established a policy reminiscent of illegal quota system. It removed non-black candidates to achieve an ideal percentage of black jurors - about 20 percent.

Despite its error, the court deserves praise for making an effort to establish racial equity within federal court juries. A recent study commissioned by the American Bar Association found that Americans deem race a highly important factor in fair jury selection, second only to income brackets. Detroit's federal court's Jury Selection Plan aimed to meet public demand for equitability. Though its most recent attempt failed to fall within acceptable legal guidelines, the court must remain committed to achieving fair representation.

03-25-98