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SCOTUSblog reports:
A Colorado man who was required to register as a sex offender after being convicted of unlawful sexual contact with two teenage girls will get a shot at a new trial, a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled today. Miguel Peña-Rodriguez had asked a state trial court for a new trial after two jurors told his lawyers that a third juror had made racially biased remarks about Peña-Rodriguez and his main witness, who are both Hispanic. But the state trial court rejected Peña-Rodriguez's request, citing a state evidentiary rule that generally bars jurors from testifying about statements made during deliberations that might call the verdict into question. In a major ruling on juror bias and fair trials, the Supreme Court reversed that holding by a vote of 5-3 and sent Peña-Rodriguez's case back to the lower courts for them to consider the two jurors' testimony for the first time.
Supreme Court's decision in Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado.
Also at Reuters, NYT, NPR, USA Today, and Bloomberg.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday March 08 2017, @09:06PM (3 children)
There's quite reasonable quantities of evidence that every major step of the criminal justice process in the US suffers a small-to-moderate racial bias, from investigations [tandfonline.com], to arrests [jstor.org](paywalled), to prosocutorial discretion [jstor.org], to (mock) sentencing [apa.org], even exoneration of wrongful conviction [nytimes.com].
And that's awful. When all the layers of difference start adding up, the injustice adds up. And you naturally want a window into the decision-making processes that lead to that injustice, and a way to correct for it. But the case that Florida's government is making is legitimate too: you don't want the reasoning of a jury to be a question of an appeal.
I wish I had a good answer, and for once in my overconfident life, I see a Supreme Court decision where I pity the justices for having to decide.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @09:21PM (2 children)
Humans are naturally tribal. It's baked into our DNA such that we have to consciously go out of our way to compensate. You can pretend you are non-biased until the cows come home, but in the end your brain is likely lying to you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @09:49PM
You can do more than pretend.
You can actively work to counter your subconscious biases, when you know about them and care about doing the right thing.
But when you are tried, or angry, or scared your brain runs on autopilot and your subconscious biases rule. So try not to end up in situations where that happens to you.
However, somebody (like the juror in question) who is willing to brag about their biases doesn't even have a hope of controlling them, because they are fully conscious biases that they embrace.
We can't get to perfect, because people aren't perfect. But we can do better than we have been.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday March 08 2017, @09:50PM
I don't purport to be unbiased. I just firmly belief that biases in a justice system are inherently unjust and must be combated for the future of our country and our species.
You can never live in an ideal world, but you can always work for a better world.