Boston Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
Prior to beginning a trial, it is commonplace for the prosecution and defense to go through a process that is called jury selection. During this process, each party is permitted to exercise several “peremptory challenges” to possible jurors. This means that each party may tell the judge that they would like to remove a possible juror from the pool without providing any reason or justification. There is an important provision of Massachusetts and federal law, however, that says that neither party may use a peremptory challenge because of a juror’s race.
How do courts interpret this rule? In one recent case before a Massachusetts court, the defendant was on trial for murder. During jury selection, the prosecution used a peremptory challenge to remove one juror who identified as Hispanic. The defense, however, argued that the prosecution only asked to strike this juror because of his ethnicity. The judge should have recognized, the defense argued on appeal, that the peremptory challenge was based on race and therefore against the law.
When the higher court reviewed the trial judge’s decision to allow the peremptory strike, it noted that the prosecution explained during jury selection that it did not feel the juror could be impartial during trial. The juror specifically stated that he was skeptical because the defendant did not have any members of his race in the jury pool, opining that this was unfair to the defendant. This, said the higher court, was a legitimate reason to remove the juror. Just because the juror brought up race did not mean the prosecution only wanted to strike him because of his race.
With this distinction, the higher court denied the defendant’s challenge to the trial court’s decision. Therefore, while it is true that a party cannot remove a potential juror because of the juror’s race, there are also different ways to interpret a party’s decision to strike a juror. This area of law can be complicated, and if your case goes to trial, the stakes are always high. To ensure you are well-protected from beginning to end of your trial proceedings, hire a Boston criminal defense lawyer you know that you can trust.
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