All-White Jury? No Problem

An Arkansas appeals court this week ruled that Kenneth Riley's rights weren't violated when a prosecutor excluded a juror in part because she's black. This is just another example of our court system's inability to address the glaring racial and economic inequalities in trials, convictions and sentencing.

Riley, who is black, was convicted by an all-white jury (though not the attentive bunch above) of robbing an Arkansas convenience store in 2007 and sentenced to 80 years in prison as a repeat offender (there's that word again). One African-American woman was among the potential jurors randomly selected, and the prosecutor used one of his allotted peremptory challenges to strike her. When the defense challenged, he said it was because she was young, inattentive, didn't complete a juror questionnaire -- and because she was black.

It's a bit shocking that the prosecutor admitted that race played a role in his decision -- my limited understanding of jury selection is that race is often a factor for both sides in making peremptory challenges but an unspoken one.

(Peremptory challenges are the certain number of potential jurors each side can strike without giving a reason. In Batson v. Kentucky in 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that these challenges can not be solely on the basis of race.)

The Arkansas Court of Appeals ruled against Riley on appeal partly because the prosecutor's race reasoning wasn't the only reason he struck the juror. (Although one of his other reasons - the one about the juror questionnaire - was clearly a red herring. A white juror also failed to complete the questionnaire and wasn't tossed.) There are some appellate technicalities as well, where Riley is penalized on appeal because his attorney didn't raise certain arguments at trial. Read the Court of Appeals' full decision for yourself here.

Courts have continued to wrangle with Batson challenges in recent years and refine the standards. Legal technicalities aside, however, Riley's case demonstrates how our system continues to tilt unabashedly against underrepresented minorities. If it's this easy for a prosecutor to get the all-white jury he wants against a black defendant, something is wrong.

The Supreme Court was right to rule (23 years ago) that race shouldn't be the sole reason for excluding a potential juror, but if we're aiming for color-blind justice it shouldn't be a factor at all.