Essay on Racial Discrimination: Jury System's Role in Perpetuating Inequality

Introduction

Is the jury part of an extensive system perpetuating racial discrimination? Various studies conducted pertinent to racial prejudices have avoided the demystification of roles played juries constituents in the determination of legal suits. Most court-based cases detail several cases for or against racial perpetuation, without giving high regard on jury influences. Data emanating from prisons, police public contacts on traffic facilities, and residential arrests indicate that black people are the most frequently arrested. The study represented herein aims at illuminating what happens in the court systems pertaining to racial composition and discrimination castigated by seating judges. If the jury achieves asymmetry pertinent to racial discrimination, then changes concerning jury composition and some legal frameworks are required. Stakeholders need to find and seal all loopholes in justice implementation that perpetuate racial discrimination. A plethora of studies have previously been conducted concerning traffic and residential spaces; the time is ripe to demystify the contribution of judges' constitution to racial discriminations. As American society grapples with racial injustices, stakeholders must understand and establish a departure point that will provide a broader scope of matters related to racial discrimination, particularly those targeted to black people.

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Discriminatory Policing and Racial Targeting of Black Americans

The rate at which black people are stopped, frisked, questioned, and arrested or wounded by police is evidence enough of the burning issues embedded in American society, pertinent to racial discrimination. Prison, traffic, and residential arrest cases indicate that black people are the most affected by proactive policing in the United States. This issue puts the American systems in the spotlight. A conclusion was made that discrimination was strictly inter-woven with systematic historical matters concerning justice, dating back from the days of kidnapping, trafficking, and enslaving people of color. Policing during the colonial period was centered towards centralized municipal policing and watching over slaves. The latter policing system was aimed at apprehending slave escapades and was started in South Carolina 1700s. After a myriad of policies, slavery was disbanded, but the mandate of slave patrollers was hideously retained in the police service. An unofficial iota of slave patrols is contemporarily observed with incessant intimidation, arrests, and injuring of former slaves (Weisburd and Majimundar). Various incidents concerning police arrests, therefore, indicate that policing in the United States is racially discriminative.

According to a report by Davis et al. (1), in 2015, 21% of residents aged between 16 and above, constituting about 53.5 million Americans, had rubbed their shoulders with police withing the year 2014. Whatever is happening in the United States of America indicates the unfair treatment of people of color, more so, black Americans. Police initiated contacts suggests that black men are the most impacted, despite having the least odds to initiate a wrangle with the uniformed forces. The police department has been in the spotlight after it was observed to curtail principles of equality. Men were arrested more often than females despite ladies leading the leader board on the most frequent initiators of police contact. Black men are, therefore, deemed as the police protagonist in American society. Additionally, black men were also likely to cause accidents more than any other race in the United States, 13.4 plus% (Davis et al., 2018). It is worth noting that blacks only lead contacts initiated by the police. Interestingly, people of white color had more contacts with police both in 2011 and 2015, 27.1 and 25.8%, respectively. The 16-17 and inbetweeners were the most affected, notwithstanding they were male. A more in-depth analysis of American society also indicates that white people were involved more in driver stop cases while black people were contacted more in public transport. Blacks use public means more than white as a good number of them live in under-developed spaces and are not economically equal to their white counterparts.

Racial Discrimination in the American Judicial System: A Historical Perspective

Recently, Donald Trump, the president of the United States of America, endorsed a stop-and-frisk policy in Chicago, a place mostly occupied by black people. The Trump endorsement has elicited massive arguments concerning police stops targeted to a black person. Notwithstanding, black people were handled with excessive force the most, among the population studied. A study conducted by the Prison Policy Initiative indicated that black people were the most stopped and frisk between 2002 and 2011. Blacks are 52% likely to be stopped by a police officer, albeit representing only 23% of the total stopped and frisked population (Wagner). Black people were not only targeted in traffic-related cases by the year 1991 but an incident recorded by a bystander, where police brutalized what seemed to be their long search, Rodney King, a black man, displayed how to open police brutalities were administered towards black people. Racial discrimination was and is still dominant in American society. Worst of all, aspects of racial discrimination seem to be embroiled in the judicial system. The involved police officers were later acquitted in a Los Angeles court, an incident that brought about demonstrations in the streets. Projections also place higher stakes on chances of black youths being incarcerated in their lifetime; they have a 32% chance (Prison Policy Initiative). The problem of racial discrimination stems deeper in society, since the invention of the laws governing the United States, most rules were meant to discriminate against black people. A focus on arrests conducted in 2010 also indicates that black people were the most affected. They are arrested in drug-related skirmishes; blacks are 12% of the population, and 13% drugs and substance use abusers (Prison Policy Initiative). Abuse of drugs illuminates psychological issues in the lives of black people.

A critical review of jury verdicts indicates that the race of the defendant was associated with the determination of guilt in most cases. Simulations involving black and white participants displayed flaws in the judicial systems where white jurors lean towards their colleagues of white color. Likewise, black jurors were found liable for finding their fellow blacks not worth of blame in a deliberation. The weak link associated with mock-jury experiments is that assumptions are made that jurors are in control of cases informed by the credibility of evidence presented in court. It is worthwhile noting that juries comprised of all-white exhumed guilt from black defendants more often than not. Results of the study excerpted hereby do not constitute a well-organized data collection formula. Data used for the study emanated from a cluster of mock-jury studies (Costly). The results of the study, however, illuminate racial discrimination in the judicial system.

Racial Bias in Jury Verdicts: Evidence from Mock-Jury Experiments

Literature materials included herein were derived from two case studies, and surveys conducted in prisons, traffic and residential arrests among the American population. Findings indicate that a plethora of cases indicate discriminatory policing where black people are the most targeted by police-initiated contacts. Most studies have managed to show a relationship between police-initiated contacts and race. The utilization of results from more than one year was a plus in the clarity of discrimination as information bias was suppressed. A case where the police were recorded on video brutalizing a black person in Los Angeles acts as visual evidence that black people have been on the receiving end of poor policing. The weaknesses associated with already carried out studies is that they have not captured police perspectives concerning the discriminative contacts. The psychological aspects of black people and their involvement in various atrocities are not captured in the studies. Studies also did not highlight driving speed applied by drivers in the highways; probably, black people were more of fast driving victims.

Methods: Content Analysis

The study herein utilizes a content analysis of the most recent case files involving black people and juries of either black or white constitution. Data on recently deliberated cases is available on various platforms such as websites and, in some other cases appearing in the form of peer-reviewed articles and reports. Data concerning multiple police contacts are also used to ascertain the stance that the American judicial systems racially discriminate against black Americans. Combining acts of discrimination from various sectors will be integral in substantiating racial discrimination against black people. Content analysis saves the time required to conduct the study; it relies on closing down loopholes in existential studies. With many studies being conducted in terms of arrests and the number of incarcerated people, this paper will focus on judgments in the judicial systems and the constitution of the involved jury. Tables will be created on at least 100 past cases, with much focus being on defendants, board, and the nature of judgments. Only cases involving either black or white participants will be utilized. Various courts will be targeted in the data collection exercise; the selection of claims will be random. Three aspects will be measured in the study; frequency of black people involved in crime, jury constitution, and decisions made, whether they were for or against black defendants (Research Proposal Structure - OWLL - Massey University). The rate of black people involved in offenses will be measured by calculating the percentage of black defendants out of total cases. The jury constitution will also be awarded codes through a nominal scale. Jury constitution will be categorized as a white-dominated, fair, or black dominated. Judgments will also be scaled according to how they favor black people; they will be classified as either pro or against black people. Pro black people judgments will be assigned a number (1) while those against black people will assume a digit (2). White-dominated juries will be marked with a code (0), fair= 1, and lastly, black-dominated will be coded (2). The dependent variable will be cases against black people, while independent variables will be detailed by the jury constitution.

The frequency of data will be enhanced by the utilization of cases from various sectors. The directionality of data will be enabled by only concentrating on incidents that involved black people only. Previously determined cases amounting to at least a hundred judgments will be ample enough in providing the intensity of data. Issues arising through the applied coding technique includes determining the appropriate category. While jury constitution is an ideal determinant of discrimination in case determinations, positions and roles attributed to jury members are also worth determinants of a locus taken by collective decisions. While parts made by the various juries may impact case determinations, judgments are meant to entail deliberations among panels involved. Thus, leaving out data about the roles of boards does not invalidate the accuracy of data applied. A white judge would, for instance, give a deliberation after discussing with white-dominated jurists, such a judgment would be difficult to categorize as either pro or against black people. The number of cases with significant ambiguities is, however, not expected to supersede either white or black-dominated and oriented cases. The number of trials with white-dominated juries against the type of judgment made will be used to determine if black people are specifically targeted by the jury...