When Black jurors are eliminated from the jury pool, justice suffers
Jury service cannot only be for the white, the lucky, and the obstinately stoic in the face of racial injustice. The jury seated in the Ahmaud Arbery trial – a Black man who was shot and killed by three white men in Glynn county, Georgia – makes a mockery of the need for a randomly selected jury. Of the 12 person jury, 11 are white and just one is Black, in a county where more than 25% of the residents are Black.
That Black jurors were dismissed because of the way they answered a series of questions about their life experiences and perceptions of racism seems particularly ironic given that only one question was asked of Ahmaud Arbery (“What were you doing back there?”) before he was pursued by three men with guns.
Sonali Chakravarti is a professor of government at Wesleyan University. She works on questions of emotions, the law and democratic institutions. She is the author of Sing the Rage: Listening to Anger after Mass Violence
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