Deeply-Rooted Bias Requires Reversal

The New Jersey Appellate Division reversed a criminal conviction for carjacking and related offenses as a result of concerns about juror racial bias

…on the second day of deliberations, Juror 4 told Jurors 5 and 12 she was “concerned” and “nervous” because she had seen two African-American men that morning in the neighborhood where she lives. Juror 4 noted, “[t]hey certainly don’t live around there, and they don’t hang around there.” Juror 5, who works in that area, agreed that this seemed strange because that area “mostly is Italian and White people. There really are no Black people around there.” Because both defendants are African-American, Juror 4 feared the presence of two African-American men in her neighborhood may have had some kind of sinister connection to the trial.

Jurors 5 and 12 were sympathetic with juror 4’s predicament and suggested she should report her concerns to the Sheriff’s Officer who was assigned to secure the jury during deliberations. The Sheriff’s Officer informed the trial judge, who then questioned each of the three jurors separately. The judge decided to allow all three jurors to remain on the jury and continue deliberating after they assured him this incident did not have an effect on their impartiality, they would follow the court’s instructions on the law, and they would base their verdict only on the evidence presented at trial.

The court

 On these facts, we are compelled to reverse. When Juror 4 inferred a sinister conspiratorial purpose from a facially innocuous event, based only on the race of the participants, she revealed a deeply-rooted, latent racial bias that required her removal from the jury. The trial judge erred in permitting her to remain on the jury and continue deliberating merely based on the juror’s self-serving denial of racial bias. Her initial instinctive, subliminal association of race with criminality or wrong-doing far trumped her subsequent assurances of impartiality.

(Mike Frisch)