All White Jury
 

The jury selection is complete and O.J. Simpson is to be tried by an all white jury. There are 9 women and 3 men all white comprising the jury. Also, there are two alternates who are black. Anyone see a problem with this?

Link

Anyone else have reservations with this?

It's not a jury of his peers.

It would be better if the jury's ethnicity reflected the ethnicity of the Las Vegas community. Maybe it does. I don't know anything about the Vegas population.

I think it's clumsy. If the verdict is guilty it will be automatically suspect because of the jury being white.

If they allowed an all black jury the samne could be said of any not guilty verdict.

12-13% of America is african-american. roughly 10% of las vegas is african-american. 10% of nine people is .9, which rounds to one. but including the alternates, 10% of 11 is 1.1, which also rounds to one. while it is a little bit iffy to have all 9 jury members white and both alternates black... we aren't talking anything MAJORLY statistically deviant. one in ten people are gay, too - should we question any jury that doesn't include a gay person?

But where are they going to find 12 black, ex pro football playing, sports commentating murderers?

Some of the Bengals aren't busy.

No I do not see a problem with this.

My initial thought was the same as Dana's post. I like what Ibram did with the statistics though. Interesting on the gay question too. Hmm, I wonder if that would be a relevant stance if sexuality was germane to the crime.

How is race germane to the crime?

I question the whole "peers" term.

It seems to me that the only thing they have in common is being adult (aged). My jury did not include either the truck driver or the paratransit guy. A "Peer" should be at least as well educated and a group should include gender, occupation and a germane similarity in the crime in question.

My jury was simply too stupid to get out of jury duty.

Yeah, but according to your quote, there are 12 people on the jury, not 9. Plus 2 alternates. I don't know why Ibby did his calculation based on 9. It all still rounds off to 1 black juror if you are trying to mimic the general population. But it's between 1 and 2, not less than 1.

I think it would be healthy to have a couple blacks on the jury. It looks bad with all whites. I'm not gonna lose sleep over it though. They had their day in court (literally) to try to get a sympathetic jury.

Im pretty sure Classicman didnt mean 'crime' per se....replace it with 'jury picks'.

My bad, I read too fast.
Okay, so. 12 jurors - still, only about 1 of them should statistically be black - and not having any isn't statistically shocking.
including alternates there's 18. 2 are black. 1.8 is 10% of 18. 1.8 rounds to about 2, so that's about right.

Problem with jury selection in general or problem with this particular instance?

As I understand it, both sides have a say in the jury selection. If the defense thought they'd be better off with the alternates, I'd guess they'd have been selected.

I'm amazed they could find a jury at all; most humans have some pretty deeply ingrained notions about the Juice, whether good or bad.