How racism shapes jury selection

This Vox video explores what happens when a jury does not look like the defendant’s peers. The video includes a study that show the racial makeup of juries can impact a verdict. It reported that all white juries are harsher on black defendants. When there are no black male jurors, the death penalty is imposed in seventy two percent of cases. More diverse juries can make a dramatic difference. One black male juror lowers that to forty three percent, and two black male jurors lower that to thirty six percent.

Voir dire is a process that looks for bias in potential jurors during the selection process. The lack of diversity in juries lessens the variety of lived experiences reflected. People with different lived experiences will not be subjected to the same biases and stereotypes, which determine how they interpret the facts of the case. The video used the cases of OJ Simpson and Emmett Till as examples. The defendants in the Emmett Till case were acquitted by a jury of twelve white male neighbors. Vox argues this would not have occurred if the defendants were Black men. OJ Simpson was acquitted by a jury with nine black jurors, which the media made a big deal about during the trial.