New Report Finds Enormous Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Manhattan Jury Pools

NEW YORK, NY (06/27/2007)(readMedia)-- A new report released today found strong racial and ethnic disparities in the people who show up to serve on juries in Manhattan, calling into question the fairness of thousands of jury verdicts reached annually in the borough. The Citizen Action of New York report found that while Whites make up about half of Manhattan’s population, three-out-of-four people who appear for jury service in Manhattan are White. Black, Asian and Hispanic Manhattan residents are largely lacking in jury pools, with Blacks being underrepresented by 42% and Hispanics by 77%.

The report’s findings mean that it is almost impossible for Manhattan courts to achieve federal and state mandates that juries represent a fair cross-section of the community. Citizen Action, the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) and other groups called for immediate action by court officials to ensure equitable representation in Manhattan jury pools.

“It is a basic principle of our justice system that juries in civil and criminal courts should represent the racial and ethnic composition of the community,” said Pamela Bennett, the New York City Director of Citizen Action. “It is truly shocking that we still don’t have a justice system that ensures fair representation of people of color and Hispanics. If we want to stem the racial divide felt in our city today, especially among our youth in communities of color, we must have a system based on equal justice. To achieve that, court officials must go out of their way to fulfill their legal and moral obligation to guarantee representative juries."

“Our survey showed that jury pools have a much higher percentage of Whites than their share of the population, while Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and mixed race people are enormously underrepresented,” said Bob Cohen, Esq., Citizen Action Policy Director and the report’s lead author. “This means that defendants in criminal cases and plaintiffs in civil proceedings, including those victimized by medical malpractice, injured workers, and those harmed by deceptive business practices, can’t be sure they’re going to get a fair result from the courts.”

Citizen Action did a visual survey of 14,429 people who responded to a jury summons in Manhattan from November 2006 through February 2007. Potential jurors appear in juror assembly rooms -- where the survey was done -- before they are referred to individual judges to be questioned and selected for juries. The state Judiciary Law gives litigants and defendants the right to “juries selected at random from a fair cross-section of the community” of that county. The apparent race and Hispanic status of the individuals tallied was compared with each group’s proportion of the population measured by the 2000 U.S. Census.

The report, “Racial and Ethnic Disparity in Manhattan Jury Pools: Results of a Survey and Suggestions for Reform,” found that:

• For criminal and civil courts combined, Whites were overrepresented by 43%, and Blacks were underrepresented by 42%, Hispanics by 77%, Asians, by 32%, and “Other Races” (i.e., other racial groups and multiracial people), by 70%.

• For civil courts, Whites were overrepresented by 42%, and Blacks were underrepresented by 41%, Hispanics, by 77%, Asians, by 31%, and “other races,” by 69%.

• As to criminal courts, whites were overrepresented by 43%, and Blacks were underrepresented by 43%, Hispanics, by 78%, Asians, by 32%, and “other races,” by 67%.

“This report confirms the worst fears of people of color and Hispanics that the courts don’t reflect the composition of our communities,” said Ken Cohen, the Regional Director of the NAACP’s New York Conference Metropolitan Council. “For decades, the NAACP has fought for representative juries throughout the nation on the belief that fair treatment for people of color is impossible without racially and ethnically balanced juries. We simply can’t wait any longer for justice.”

"The finding by Citizen Action that Latinos are underrepresented by 77% in Manhattan jury pools is not surprising. Latinos tend to be underrepresented in every aspect of the state court system except as

criminal defendants," said Hector Soto, Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Latino Policy.

“As a lawyer who has practiced in Manhattan and throughout New York City for over 20 years, I know that a representative jury can mean the difference in many cases, and it’s a critical component of fair and equal justice when people of color are litigants or defendants,” said Hugh Campbell, a member of the firm of Rodman and Campbell, P.C. who is a past president of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, the Black Bar Association of Bronx County and the Bronx County Bar Association. “But you simply can’t pick a representative jury if the jury pool almost entirely excludes citizens of color.”

The report recommends that these steps be taken by court officials on the state and local levels (the Manhattan County Clerk administers court selection in the borough):

• broadening the state juror source list -- the list from which county court officials draw names to be summoned for jury service -- to reflect the real racial and ethnic population of Manhattan, through such means as adding names from city directories, and community organizations;

• sending a higher proportion of qualifications questionnaires and summonses to communities with a higher proportion of people of color and Hispanics, to compensate for their lower response rates;

• updating juror source list addresses more frequently, from annually to semi-annually, to compensate for the higher mobility of people of color and Hispanics; and

• increasing state regulation of county use of juror source lists to ensure that the pool of prospective jurors available for a particular trial is racially and ethically balanced.

“Manhattan court officials should begin studying the report today, and work with all stakeholders to address the findings in this report. As officials charged with ensuring compliance with the requirements of state law and the U.S. Constitution, they have a duty to address a system that is clearly biased against people of color and Hispanics,” said Bennett. “Our recommendations today are low-cost and relatively easily to implement, balanced against the harms documented in our report.”

Citizen Action of New York is a statewide membership organization working for social, racial, economic and environmental justice. The report is available at www.citizenactionny.org.

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Posted Wednesday June 27, 2007 at 10:31 am by Citizen Action of NY