Massachusetts is a weird state. We are known as one of (if not the) most liberal states in the country (see, i.e., gay marriage, lots of taxes), but we also have this specter of old racism that still haunts us (see, i.e., school busing, the near-riots following the Charles Stuart murder saga). The reality is that this state is deeply conflicted, filled with righteousness as well as liberal guilt about what may be hiding just below the surface. It is that uneasy reality that seems to inform an interesting article in a regional paper today about minority representation on juries.
Supreme Court case law has clearly established that jury pools must be chosen from a fair cross-section of the community, but that there is “no requirement that petit juries actually chosen must mirror the community and reflect the various distinctive groups in the population.” But some judges here are now growing concerned that the jury pool isn’t representative, meaning that many actual juries certainly are not representative and, as a result, that minority defendants are at a disadvantage.
[A] potential death penalty case in federal court in Boston, in which U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner feared black defendants would be judged by a white jury, spurred changes in the federal jury system this month. The federal courts’ eastern division has produced particularly egregious discrepancies between the races of jurors and the races of defendants.
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf recently announced changes to the jury selection system that took effect March 1 in all three federal court divisions in Massachusetts. To begin with, the summonses will be checked against the Postal Service’s national change-of-address list twice a year instead of once.
And if a summons comes back as undeliverable, a new summons will be sent to another address in the same ZIP code.
Jurors here are chosen from “resident” lists, rather than from voter registrations, but a 14-year-long push by State Senator Stanley Rosenberg to also consider Registry of Motor Vehicle and Department of Transitional Assistance lists have been ignored.
Even though the measure keeps getting publicly approved in the Legislature, it gets derailed in ways that Mr. Rosenberg, the Senate pro tem and former Ways and Means chairman, doesn’t understand. It has happened so consistently that Mr. Rosenberg said he will no longer push the idea, even though almost every other state now uses his proposed “merge and purge” method, and has equaled or surpassed Massachusetts, which used to be the national leader for inclusive voting lists.
These mysterious “derailments” seem to disturbingly highlight that hidden current of racism that I fear runs so strongly around here. I do not think there is an active movement to keep minorities from serving on juries, nor do I think that these are issues just facing Massachusetts. But it is disheartening (and slightly nauseating) to see minority defendant after minority defendant facing a box full of white faces…
In consecutive trials of minority clients of Worcester lawyer Peter L. Ettenberg in Worcester Superior Court, there was one minority member in the jury pools — a combined total of 160 potential jurors, according to Mr. Ettenberg.
