Race Interrupted

The Connecticut Supreme Court has found no basis to overturn a criminal conviction because the prosecutor was permitted to use a peremptory challange to exclude a juror who answered the optional “race” question by claiming membership in the “human race.”

The court

…our decision should not be construed to limit how an individual can identify his or her race in the juror questionnaire. An individual will still be free to list ‘‘human’’ as his or her race. We merely conclude that a peremptory challenge based on such an unusual answer is race neutral under the circumstances of the present case and that a trial court in a future case may or may not find pretext, depending on the particular facts of the case. Finally, we note that a peremptory challenge based on a venireperson’s offensive or ridiculous answer to the race question might in fact further the interests of justice. As the defendant himself acknowledges in his brief, an answer such as ‘‘Aryan’’ might indeed signal that the venireperson likely would be ‘‘unable impartially to consider the state’s case against [an African-American] defendant.’’ We therefore decline to invoke our supervisory powers to create a rule preventing parties from exercising peremptory challenges based on answers to the race question in the juror questionnaire.

There is a concurring opinion. (Mike Frisch)