Student Commentary by M.A. Widder
In Harper Lee's classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, an all-white jury in a sleepy southern town in the 1930s convicts and sentences to death a black defendant accused of raping a white woman. The jury renders its verdict despite clear evidence that the defendant was physically incapable of committing the crime with which he was charged. In a scene set five decades later, in John Grisham's potboiler A Time to Kill, an all-white jury in yet another sleepy southern town acquits a black defendant undeniably guilty of planning and executing the murder of the white men who brutally raped his ten-year-old daughter. The jury is able to reach its nullifying verdict only by imagining that the young girl was white and her vicious ravagers black.
The jury in Harper Lee's novel is unable and, for the most part, unwilling to overcome its belief that truth must uphold the sanctity of white womanhood. The verdict is reached, however, not because of sympathy for the alleged victim but because of active animosity toward the defendant-the jury is incapable of accepting truth as propounded by a black man. Conversely, in John Grisham's work, the jury is able to overcome its lack of sympathy for the defendant and to “do the right thing” only by succumbing perversely to the very form of racial prejudice that had animated Lee's jury. Thus, while the verdicts may differ, their underlying rationale, the rationale swaying the jury, remains the same.
As the arbiter of guilt and innocence, the jury is both the visible center of the criminal justice system and the body most screened from scrutiny. The parties pour evidence into the record, the judge adds a dose of law to the mix and, in the secrecy of deliberations, a verdict is brewed. When racism is an added toxin in the jury's solution, its flavor can either overpower or leave a scarcely discernable, but nonetheless bitter, aftertaste. In recent years, the Supreme Court has done much to curb entry of the more pungent varieties of racial animus that may contaminate the system, but has demonstrated a less than sensitive palate in detecting-and subsequently neutralizing-the more furtive and subtle racist elements that also poison the criminal process.
This Note investigates the Supreme Court's failure to address the effects of racism on the jury's determination of guilt, particularly those effects that leave a mere trace of their existence, thus making their precise source difficult to pinpoint. Part II discusses how the Court, although receptive to attacks on overt displays of racial bias, is ill-equipped to confront more insidious expressions of invidious discrimination. In addressing jury racism, the Court's reliance on equal protection doctrine substantially impairs its ability to develop an effective solution to the problem of the racist jury. Part III then analyzes how the route the Court has traveled has led it astray in its recent focus on the jury selection process. The decisions evolving from Batson v. Kentucky prohibit counsel from exercising peremptory challenges of prospective jurors on racial grounds. To the extent that these cases focus on the right of jurors to be free from discrimination and on the conduct of attorneys in selecting a jury, rather than on the composition of the jury that results, they prove inadequate to protect the defendant's fundamental right to trial by an impartial jury. Further, the ease with which a Batson challenge can be rebutted may render these decisions no more than hollow condemnations of the particular form of discrimination they address. Part IV suggests a remedy for these inadequacies by outlining steps the Court could take to safeguard more adequately the defendant's right to an impartial jury.
About the Author
M.A. Widder.
Citation
67 Tul. L. Rev. 2311 (1993)