A federal jury Wednesday acquitted a white Louisiana trooper charged with violating the civil rights of a Black motorist despite body-camera footage that showed the officer pummeling the man 18 times with a flashlight.

A federal jury in Louisiana on Wednesday acquitted a white state trooper charged with violating the civil rights of a Black motorist despite body-camera footage that showed the officer pummeling the man 18 times with a flashlight.

    • @Zaktor@lemmy.world
      11•1 year ago

      You can’t exclude your way to having a representative jury. If the opposing side strikes all/most of the black people, none of your strike choices can make the jury more black.

      Why Is It So Easy for Prosecutors to Strike Black Jurors?

      There are no comprehensive statistics on how often prosecutors strike jurors based on race, but there is little doubt that the practice remains common, especially in the South. In Caddo Parish, Louisiana, prosecutors struck forty-eight per cent of qualified black jurors between 1997 and 2009 and only fourteen per cent of qualified whites, according to a review by the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center. In Jefferson Parish, where a quarter of the population is black, the split was even greater—fifty-five per cent to sixteen per cent—so that twenty-two per cent of felony trials between 1994 and 2002 had no black jurors.

        • @Zaktor@lemmy.world
          2•1 year ago

          Your original statement was that the lawyers on both sides have influence. Which they do, but only one side is responsible for all white juries. It’s not a failure of the other side for allowing that to happen.