Jury Bias: Identifying its Prevalence and Significance in Discriminatory Verdicts Andie Anacreonte
A pivotal assumption that has attracted attention within the legal system is the notion that jurors are able to make unbiased decisions. In attempt to ensure that juries are composed of jurors who are free from bias, venirepersons (potential jurors) are interviewed in a procedure prior to the trial. During this procedure, venirepersons respond to questions that are designed to invite responses that will allow judges and attorneys to evaluate whether they may have knowledge or biases that would interfere with the duty, to evaluate the evidence fairly and make decisions that align with the law. However, the extent to which the process results in the removal of problematic jurors from jury service is extremely limited. This issue has been prominent in society throughout history. Although, in 1880 the Supreme Court ruled that laws excluding black people from jury service were eliminated as they violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, exclusion of black jurors continued throughout both the 19th and 20th centuries. States in the South evaded the law with ease and laws to protect African American’s juror rights were not enforced. A major example of Jury bias in all-white juries is prominent in the Scottsboro Boys case. On March 25, 1931, nine African American teenagers were accused of raping two white women aboard a Southern Railroad train in Alabama. A racially motivated fight broke out between young white men and the Scottsboro boys, and the white men were removed from the train. Their anger led them to creating assault accusations against the boys. Additionally, two white women who were also riding the freight train faced charges of prostitution. In order to avoid these charges, they falsely accused the Scottsboro Boys of rape. A legal battle which lasted for over 80 years commenced, in which an
all-white, prejudiced jury convicted the boys of rape several times, even with an undeniable lack of evidence. Eight of the nine young men were unjustly sentenced to death. This devastating case led to two additional Supreme Court rulings on jury diversification in Patterson v the State of Alabama, and Norris v the state of Alabama. Both of these cases involved false rape accusations against African American boys, in which all-white juries gave a prejudiced verdict. These detrimental examples of prejudice within the justice system brought attention to the issue of all-white juries and was extremely important in mobilising the Civil Rights movement’s fight against legal challenges. This problem is also prevalent nowadays, even in an increasingly tolerant society. Due to jurors possessing a capability to access media content prior to trial, prejudiced views can be formed before one even steps into the courtroom. For example, a modern example of this devastating issue is particularly prescient in the case of Porter v. Magill, where defendant Dame Porter claimed that she suffered from tribunal bias, attributing it to historic negative press conferences. Would a fair minded and informed observer conclude there was a real possibility or danger that the tribunal was biased, based on the access they had to media reports of Porter? Jurors are only human, and it cannot be expected that all jurors are capable of setting aside their own biases or relationship to the case- particularly when cases are full of corruption. Subconscious and conscious biases within juries will inevitably continue to detrimentally affect verdicts within legal cases, and this issue cannot be ignored. This demonstrates that implicit bias remains a terrible issue in juries. Moreover, in today’s society, the sheer speed that information can travel amplifies this issue to an extreme extent. The effects of the “age of information” are growing, and as society becomes increasingly dependent on technology and mass media, the pivotal question: ‘who is an impartial juror in an age of mass media?’ must be posed. In today’s society, it is inevitable for some jurors to arrive with substantial knowledge of the victim, through access to their social media. It is said that ‘judges are virtually powerless to stem to the flow of information’. As a result, in cases where there is media involvement or social media, judges and barristers must identify areas of potential bias and seek to remedy them through skilled advocacy. The key issue is that it is possible that
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