Peremptory strikes are often used to illegally keep people off juries because of their race. In 2022, Arizona got rid of them. So far, the innovative move appears to be successfully combating racial bias in jury selection and improving the diversity of juries.

Across the country, the fairness, reliability, and integrity of the legal system have been compromised by clear evidence of racial bias in the selection of juries.

Unrepresentative juries exclude and marginalize communities of color—and they produce wrongful convictions and unfair sentences.

The primary tool for preventing people of color from serving on juries has been the use of peremptory strikes, which allow lawyers to remove otherwise qualified jurors for virtually any reason—or no reason at all.

The Supreme Court has long recognized that peremptory strikes are used to illegally remove jurors because of their race. In 1986, the Court attempted in Batson v. Kentucky to make it easier to prove that a peremptory strike is racially biased.

But as Justice Thurgood Marshall warned at the time, the decision did “not end the racial discrimination that peremptories inject into the jury-selection process.”

Significant disparities in jury representation by race and ethnicity have persisted in both criminal and civil cases in Maricopa County, where more than 60% of Arizona’s population resides.

In 2019, a recent analysis shows, 59.8% of Maricopa County residents identified as white, but 80% of jurors were white. The county’s population is 32% Hispanic, but less than 20% of jurors were Hispanic. And prosecutors struck Black potential jurors at a rate 40% greater than their presence in the venire and American Indian individuals at a 50% greater rate.

Batson had not remedied the problem, researchers found. The legal standard articulated in Batson is still easy to meet despite discriminatory conduct. In fact, appellate courts had found Batson error in only 4.4% of cases statewide.

Taking its cue from Justice Marshall, who wrote that ending illegal racial discrimination in jury selection “can be accomplished only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely,” Arizona became the first state to eliminate all peremptory challenges.

 

Read the full article about combating racial bias in jury selection at Equal Justice Initiative.