Commentary: By Bailing Out on Jury Duty, We Leave the Fate of Young Black Men to Everyone Else
Date: Wednesday, September 26, 2007
By: Tonyaa Weathersbee, BlackAmericaWeb.com
The Jena Six case has gone beyond being just one huge example of how the justice system in that Louisiana backwater is bordering on replicating the black codes of the Old South.
It also exposes other inequities that show how difficult a time black people have when it comes to making the justice system work for them.
This past weekend, an Associated Press story detailed facts that had either been missed or misconstrued in the maelstrom of the case of six youth black men who were slapped with 15 to 20-year sentences for what amounted to a schoolyard fight; a case that has now become the flashpoint of what some are calling a new civil rights movement.
Few of the facts that the AP story claims to clarify; i.e., there were two nooses, not three, and that students of all races sat under the “white” tree at some point, made a difference in the bottom line: The punishments for the Jena 6 are absurdly harsh and don’t fit the crime.
But one fact -- that Jena Six defendant Mychal Bell was left to mercy of an all-white jury because the few blacks who were summoned failed to show -- is one that begs to have more truth put behind it.
The AP story, of course, didn’t say why the black people who were summoned for jury selection for Bell’s trial didn’t show up. But all over the country, getting black people to serve on juries can be tough. Issues related to poverty often force black people everywhere to shirk that public duty rather than grasp it.
And sadly enough, some reasons have more to do with apathy than lack of opportunity.
Because black people tend to be disproportionately poor, they tend to move around a lot, chasing cheaper housing. What that means is that many times, jury summonses for them wind up at their old addresses.
Most of the time, the daily compensation that jurors are paid -- in Louisiana, it’s around $40 a day -- isn’t enough to make up the wages many of them would lose from their time away from the two or three jobs they are likely to be working. Kick in the fact that many struggling people grapple with daycare concerns as well, and it’s easy to see why many would rather take a chance on ignoring a summons than responding to it.
Discrimination also figures in as well.
In 2002, for example, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review found that Allegheny County consistently overlooked black people when coming up with lists of potential jurors. The newspaper found that while 11 percent of Allegheny County’s adult population was black, an average of 4 percent of people serving jury duty in criminal cases was black.
That led to a situation in which black defendants were repeatedly being tried by all-white juries.
Yet, the scarcity of blacks on juries isn’t simply a problem of not being able to spare the time or money, or not being asked. Sometimes, we just don’t wanna do it.
For silly reasons.
I know of people who purposely try to make themselves seem unhinged by saying things like they hate all white people or claiming to want to see insanely harsh punishments for certain crimes just so they’ll be dismissed in the questioning.
These are the people who are more concerned with their personal comfort and convenience rather than justice.
I also know of people who won’t serve on juries because they say they believe God is the only judge, and they believe they’ll go to hell or something if they try to do the same thing.
That’s dumb.
In any case, we’ve got to do better. And it is my hope is that as the Jena Six case continues to shine a light on unequal justice, we’ll think more about what we can do, as black people, to balance the scales. Meaning that for most of us, we can start simply by embracing the chance to serve on a jury -- and stop leaving the fate of so many young black males to whites who care more about containing them than being fair to them.
It’s true that when it comes to outrages like the Jena Six case, we have a duty to protest the system. But in the meantime, we also have a duty to participate in the system whenever possible -- and to fight to heighten our possibilities of participating.
Not that the system will be perfect afterward. But at least those who design it won’t have us to blame.
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