Exhaustive new study finds black jurors struck from juries 300% more than their white peers

Exhaustive new study finds black jurors struck from juries 300% more than their white peers

We already know that African Americans are disproportionately arrested/convicted for similar crimes committed by their white counterparts.

We already know that black women are arrested up to 13 times the rate as other women.

Blacks and whites use marijuana at the same rate, but African Americans are arrested at nearly four times the rate.  

Even unarmed African Americans are twice as likely to be killed by police than their unarmed white counterparts.

Now a groundbreaking new study absolutely confirms much of what we've believed to be true for decades about African Americans being denied a jury of their peers in districts all over the country.

In Shreveport, Louisiana, where more black men are being sent to death row than any single district in the country, district attorneys and prosecutors would routinely preemptively strike African Americans from juries at three times the rate of their white counterparts. For preemptive strikes, no rationale or reason is required.

Here are some reasons prosecutors have offered for excluding blacks from juries: They were young or old, single or divorced, religious or not, failed to make eye contact, lived in a poor part of town, had served in the military, had a hyphenated last name, displayed bad posture, were sullen, disrespectful or talkative, had long hair, wore a beard.

Similarly disturbing rates and practices were actually found throughout the American South in Georgia, North Carolina, and Alabama. The impact is staggering and often means the difference between life and death for those on trial.

Reprieve Australia, a group that opposes the death penalty and conducted the Caddo Parish study, said the likelihood of an acquittal rose with the number of blacks on the jury.

No defendants were acquitted when two or fewer of the dozen jurors were black. When there were at least three black jurors, the acquittal rate was 12 percent. With five or more, the rate rose to 19 percent. Defendants in all three groups were overwhelmingly black

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Mind you, this damning study comes after it was determined that over 95 percent of the nation's more than 2,000 elected prosecutors are white—and nearly 80 percent are white men.

So, in a system that targets, arrests, imprisons, executes, and murders African Americans at outrageously disproportionate rates, it is now an indisputable fact that the prosecutors and juries are woefully and painfully stacked against any semblance of justice.

Make no mistake about it, this system is not accidental, but is as purposeful as it gets. Welcome to the New Jim Crow.