By Crescenzo Vellucci
Vanguard Sacramento Bureau Chief
SACRAMENTO – Monday, a Black man was kicked off a jury here because of his attire. And maybe because he wore headphones into court and maybe because he didn’t remove his hat until he was asked to do so.
That may be discouraging to the defendant in the case, who is also Black. And the potential juror removed was the only Black man in the jury pool. There two Black women still on the jury as of late Monday – although there was still time to challenge them Tuesday.
Jury selection is an oft-forgotten part of the trial process – it’s thought not to be sexy enough to deserve the attention of news reporters, for instance. But lawyers know jury selection can mean, literally, life or death for the defendant. Or jail or no jail.
It may be such a case in the Sacramento County Superior Court trial of Alvin Williams, accused of five felonies, including criminal threats, and three counts of assault and battery with a deadly weapon, including on a peace officer.
Superior Court Judge Donald Currier, after a back-and-forth with Assistant Public Defender Tatiana Cottam and Deputy District Attorney Kristin Hayes, agreed to dismiss the juror, based largely on juror’s appearance.
“This is race neutral,” claimed Hayes, stating that it was the juror’s “physical appearance not race” that caused him to get the boot.
“He’s overweight, wore headphones..and he didn’t remove his hat (in court),” Hayes argued.
However, defense attorney Cottam strongly suggested it may have been because of his race.
“She (the DDA) asked zero questions to see if he (the juror) took the case seriously,” said Cottam.
In the end, the judge agreed with Hayes, ruling that “He (the juror) takes no pride in the way he presents himself.”
The case continues Tuesday – Williams, who is homeless, is accused of threatening another unhoused person Nov. 19, 2019 with a rock, which he later threw at officers. They responded by trying to 
arrest him, and in the ensuing fight, according to the police reports, an officer was stunned by a taser by accident by another officer and Williams’ pit bull bit another officer. The dog was then shot and killed.
But the issue of “tainted” Sacramento County jurors has come up before, and recently.
Late in 2019, private defense attorney Claire White charged the county is racially discriminating against the African-American community in its jury pool decision, and, in a broad statistical analysis, said odds that Blacks are so under-represented in the jury pool are near-astronomical.
Because of White’s allegations, Judge Curtis Fiorini delayed the jury selection portion of a trial of Jaedon Evans, the client of White, and Preston Bouie, represented by Tom Clinkenbeard, for armed robbery at a Sacramento Denny’s restaurant in May of 2019. In the end, their charges were dismissed.
Although she ultimately lost the challenge, White’s filed a motion to dismiss the entire jury county venire/pool, saying “the jury is not drawn from a representative cross-section of the relevant community in violation of the defendant’s federal and state constitutional rights.”
White challenged the county juror selection when only two of 60 jurors in her client’s case were Black. Both defendants in the case are Black.
She said and “the jury selection procedure in Sacramento County has resulted in selection of jurors in a constitutionally impermissible manner; that the jury excludes jurors of a protected class in violation of the defendant’s federal and state constitutional rights.”
In a detailed analysis provided the court, White said “it’s a mathematical fact that there is a disparity between the relative (number) of Black jurors in the venire and the relative population of Black people in the county.”
White maintained in her pleading that “statisticians in analyzing the limited data available to Mr. Evans, namely the presence of only 2 Black jurors out of 60 jurors” indicated that “if the venire is a fair cross section of the community, in this case a community with 10.9% Black population (as noted in the 2010 Sacramento County census), drawing only 2 Black jurors in a group of 60, would only happen 0.000027% of the time.”
“In other words, if there were 1000 jury trials in Sacramento county per year, we should only get a panel of 60 potential jurors with 2 potential Black jurors once every 3,600 years. Essentially, it’s a mathematical fact that there is a disparity between the relative number of Black jurors in the venire (jury pool) and the relative population of Black people in the county,” White said.
The Oakland-based attorney continued, “the system used inevitably and definitively results in a disparity in the number of Black jurors relative to the Black population of the county,” and that the venire cannot be a fair cross section of the community. This disparity, or under representations of African-Americans citizens on the jury venires in Sacramento County is not fair or reasonable in relation to the numbers of such persons in the community.”
White, in her brief, quoted former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who said:
“When any large and identifiable segment of the community is excluded from jury service, the effect is to remove from the jury room qualities of human nature and varieties of human experience, the range of which is unknown and perhaps unknowable. It is not necessary to assume that the excluded group will consistently vote as a class in order to conclude, as we do, that their exclusion deprives the jury of a perspective on human events that may have unsuspected importance in any case that may be presented.”
White then asked the court to dismiss the entire jury venire/pool, charging that “the Sacramento County Superior Court’s jury selection process as currently implemented results in a significant under representation of African Americans.”
“The resulting disproportionate number of African Americans on defendant’s jury not only violates defendant’s constitutional right to a representative cross-section of our community on this jury but it also injures the entire community and reflects poorly on the judicial process throughout the county,” White said.
When White posed the challenge concerning the county jury pool initially, veteran defense lawyers said they couldn’t recall such a request – let alone one that was granted. One attorney said “it’s about time” the jury selection process in Sacramento was examined.
Sacramento County admitted in response to a query by White that it does not keep any records regarding potential jurors selection. The court later tossed out the jury challenge because, in fact, the statistics needed to back up White’s challenge just don’t exist because the studies have not been done, in large part because the Legislature has not approved a budget to do those studies.
To sign up for our new newsletter – Everyday Injustice – https://tinyurl.com/yyultcf9
