The title of this post is the title of this notable new report from the folks at Prison Policy Initiative. Here are excerpts from the report's first part:
In courthouses throughout the country, defendants are routinely denied the promise of a "jury of their peers," thanks to a lack of racial diversity in jury boxes. One major reason for this lack of diversity is the constellation of laws prohibiting people convicted (or sometimes simply accused) of crimes from serving on juries. These laws bar more than twenty million people from jury service, reduce jury diversity by disproportionately excluding Black and Latinx people, and actually cause juries to deliberate less effectively. Such exclusionary practices exist in every state and often ban people from jury service forever....
As we have chronicled extensively, the criminal justice system disproportionately targets Black people and Latinx people — so when states bar people with criminal convictions from jury service, they disproportionately exclude individuals from these groups. Of the approximately 19 million Americans with felony convictions in 2010, an estimated 36% (nearly 7 million people) were Black, despite the fact that Black people comprise 13% of the U.S. population. Although data on the number of Latinx people with felony convictions is difficult to find (because information about Latinx heritage has not always been collected or reported accurately within the criminal justice system), we do know that Hispanic people are more likely to be incarcerated than non-Hispanic whites and are overrepresented at numerous stages of the criminal justice process. It stands to reason, then, that Latinx populations are also disproportionately likely to have felony convictions.
As a result, jury exclusion statutes contribute to a lack of jury diversity across the country. A 2011 study found that in one county in Georgia, 34% of Black adults — and 63% of Black men — were excluded from juries because of criminal convictions. In New York State, approximately 33% of Black men are excluded from the jury pool because of the state’s felony disqualification law. Nationwide, approximately one-third of Black men have a felony conviction; thus, in most places, many Black jurors (and many Black male jurors in particular) are barred by exclusion statutes long before any prosecutor can strike them in the courtroom.
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