Alabama Blacks Sue For More Diverse Juries In The State

Jet, Sept 17, 2001

A group of Blacks who have never been called for jury duty in Tallassee, AL, have filed a class action lawsuit against Alabama officials because of the lack of diversity on the state's juries.

Rev. Bernard Martin, 64, one of the persons involved in the lawsuit who resides in Elmore County, says he has never been called to serve on a jury, and that troubled him.

"I've lived here mostly all my life and I've just seen the results of outcomes of juries that did not have the racial proportions in play," he told JET. "And I thought it was something that was needed; a change in the systems, in the way the juries were selected."

According to the Washington, D.C.,-based Sentencing Project, which collects data on the criminal justice system, Alabama court records show that Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be charged with crimes, end up in prison and express distrust in police and the courts. Blacks and Hispanics each make up about 12% of the U.S. population, but 46% of all state and federal prison inmates are Black and 18% are Hispanic.

Martin said that whenever he had been in a courtroom when someone Black was charged or sentenced, because of a crime, the jury was White, or mostly White.

The U.S. Supreme Court rulings don't guarantee racially representative juries, but only that no "systematic exclusion" of any distinct group of people.

"I was guided [by the words] of the philosopher, Frances Bacon, who said that things alter for the worst spontaneously if they are not altered by design," Martin expressed. "I want to see that the court system is operating for all of us ... and [I] saw it as a responsibility in making a change so that more minorities could participate in the decision-making process of who's right or who's wrong."