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Essay On Unfair Jury Trials In The United States

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Unfair Jury Trials in the United States
Despite the current efforts for equality, racial discrimination can still be detected in almost every aspect of American life today: education, the workforce, and our Criminal Justice System. I’d like to highlight a major obstacle that we have been struggling to overcome since the early 1980’s. Often times jury selection unfairly excludes people of color. Timothy Foster, a black man who was sentenced to death by an all-white jury, recently got justice for his unfair trial, but many others haven’t been as lucky. The jury is crucial in court cases and we must work to improve this flawed system to prevent even more suffering for people of color.
Under the 6th amendment, Americans have the right to an “impartial jury”. The purpose of a jury is to provide an unbiased, outside approach to a case. A juror’s role is to listen to both sides of the debate, evaluate all the evidence presented, and make a decision. The United States is known for implementing checks and balances into our government system. This jury system is …show more content…

On their notes, each potential black juror was highlighted and the word black was circled. They also ranked a few potential jurors as “B#1, B#2, and B#3” in case they had to choose a black person. They had excuses, or race neutral reasons, already thought out. They also had a list of “definite no’s”. The list consisted entirely of black people (Chavis). This is an obvious display of corrupt officials. There is overwhelming evidence that Foster’s prosecutors had racial bias in his trial, but what about the cases where the discrimination isn’t as easily detectable, a case where the prosecutors are very careful to conceal their prejudices. Do those victims stay trapped on death row until someone can prove they had an unfair trial? Most likely, yes. This broken system needs to be understood if we are going to remove racial bias from the Criminal Justice

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