The pending trial of two black men from Dorchester who are charged with the 2001 gang murder of another black man prompted African American groups in the Boston area to demand fairer representation for black people on juries. And although a federal appeals court rejected the measure, officials at the NAACP have said they plan to continue pushing for a more adequate juror selection process.
The lawyers representing the two accused men, Branden Morris and Darryl Green, agreed that there is an under-representation of African Americans on federal juries.
According to Leonard Alkins, president of Boston’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, this under-representation is due in part to the jury selection process.
“[African Americans] are not represented because [jurors] are selected by a process using a residence list, which is poorly kept and not accurately updated,” Alkins said.
He added that most African Americans in Massachusetts live in Suffolk, Middlesex and Plymouth Counties, and addresses in these counties have not been updated recently.
As a direct result, juror summons notices are not delivered to the persons requested. If no one replies to the summons, another summons is randomly sent to another person, Alkins said.
“Unfortunately, many of the jurors who are sitting on these trials don’t understand the cultures or the areas where the crimes were committed,” Alkins said. “So they tend to develop biases and negative opinions of the [people on trial] based on the information they receive about what goes on.”
Stanley Fisher, a Boston University Law School professor, agreed that there have been very few black jurors in the Boston area.
“I understand that this is a very serious problem in the Boston district,” Fisher said.
Because areas that are wealthier keep more updated residency lists, the odds of receiving a response from one of these areas are greater, Fisher said.
According to report in The Boston Globe last month, U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner proposed a plan to target jury summonses at specific ZIP codes in an effort to increase the number of black people on juries. According to Gertner’s plan, if a person does not respond to the jury summons, a second letter would be sent to the same household. If the summons still does not receive a response, another letter would be sent to a different person within the same ZIP code. This, Gertner argued, would increase the odds of African Americans getting into the jury pool.
But on Oct. 7, a federal appeals court rejected Gertner’s proposal. Fisher called Gertner’s plan an “affirmative action remedy.”
Although Gertner’s argument cites a poll that shows that black people are less likely to vote for the death penalty than are white people, Fisher said “the problem goes beyond the death penalty.”
“The jury has a lot of power deciding whether a witness is credible,” he said. “If a certain proportion of the jury is whites, they will act a certain way.
“African Americans have a different view of police because of first -or second-hand experiences. They’re more willing to believe a police officer will lie under oath or perform illegally. People who are better off have not had these experiences [and] do not feel this way,” he continued.
Fisher said that in addition to making juries more diverse, jurors from all cultures should be more empathetic toward witnesses.
Although Gertner’s plan to alter the jury selection process was rejected, Alkins said the NAACP is still taking steps to change the system. First Circuit Court judges are considering the issue and Alkins said his organization is sending them letters asking them to accept a more representative selection process.
“Hopefully we will be asked to work with a committee to make jury selection as fair as possible,” he said. “It’s not to say that the outcome of the case wouldn’t be the same, but there must be fairness. [People] are entitled to be tried by a jury of their peers.”
Matt O’Malley, who is running for an at-large City Council seat on Nov. 8, said he would support action to make juries more representative of African Americans.
“When you take areas like Jamaica Plain or Dorchester, both of which have pockets that are very wealthy amidst areas that are very poor — all under the same zip code — you will have the same problem,” O’Malley said. “It’s clearly important to have a jury pool that reflects a society. I would support some steps towards this.”
According to the 2000 census, approximately one-quarter of Boston’s population is African American.