Exclusion of Blacks From Juries Raises Renewed Scrutiny

SHREVEPORT, La. — Here are some reasons prosecutors have offered for excluding blacks from juries: They were young or old, single or divorced, religious or not, failed to make eye contact, lived in a poor part of town, had served in the military, had a hyphenated last name, displayed bad posture, were sullen, disrespectful or talkative, had long hair, wore a beard.

The prosecutors had all used peremptory challenges, which generally allow lawyers to dismiss potential jurors without offering an explanation. But the Supreme Court makes an exception: If lawyers are accused of racial discrimination in picking jurors, they must offer a neutral justification.

Who's to blame for juror no-shows: 'Sad generation' or broken system?

When a Nova Scotia judge recently decried a “flabby, sad generation” for failing to appear for jury duty, he likely struck a chord in courtrooms across Canada.

Most provinces and territories that track absenteeism among prospective jurors (and few of them do) report that about one-fifth of citizens don’t show up when summoned.

Anders Breivik trial: Norway’s mass killer’s tears not ‘out of pity’

OSLO—Anders Behring Breivik shed tears as he went on trial Monday for killing 77 people — but not for his victims. The emotional display came when prosecutors showed his anti-Muslim video.

Dressed in a dark suit and sporting a thin beard, the right-wing fanatic defended the July 22 massacre as an act of “self-defense” in his professed civil war, and sat stone-faced as prosecutors described how he killed each of his victims.

But he was gripped by emotion when they showed a video warning of a Muslim takeover of Europe and laden with crusader imagery that he posted on YouTube before the attacks. Suddenly, the self-styled “resistance” fighter’s eyes welled up. He cringed his face and wiped away tears with trembling hands.

“Nobody believes that he cried out of pity for the victims,” said Mette Yvonne Larsen, a lawyer representing survivors and victim’s families in the court proceedings.

Breivik showed no signs of remorse on the first day of a trial that is expected to last 10 weeks. After being uncuffed, he extended his right arm in a clenched-fist salute. He refused to stand when the judges entered the room.

Alleged G20 conspirators ask for trial by judge and jury

Fifteen months after the tumultuous G20 summit in Toronto, the preliminary inquiry for 17 people accused of conspiring to disrupt it has begun in the city’s north end.

The hearing before Mr. Justice Gerald Lapkin of the Ontario Court of Justice will determine whether there is sufficient evidence to commit the 10 men and seven women to trial, and is scheduled to last about 11 weeks.

Amid tight security, the 17 defendants and a group of supporters filed into the big Finch Avenue West courtroom shortly before 10 a.m. Monday and took their seats along the west wall. All but one of the accused, who for now is representing himself, have lawyers.

After some procedural issues were dealt with, lead prosecutor Jason Miller began summarizing the Crown’s evidence, which was placed under the usual pre-trial publication ban.

Most of the 17 defendants are in their early 20s and are variously accused of conspiring to commit mischief, obstruct police, resist arrest and with counselling to assault police.

Alabama Judges Impose Death Though Juries Vote For Life In Prison

Last November, jurors in Lee County, Ala., found Courtney Lockhart, a 26-year-old Iraq War veteran, guilty of the 2008 murder of Lauren Burk, an 18-year-old college student.

During sentencing, all 12 members of the jury recommended that Lockhart serve life in prison without the possibility of parole for his crime. Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, but the defense argued for lenience, presenting evidence that Lockhart had suffered psychological damage during a bloody 16-month combat tour in Iraq.

The jurors' unanimous decision to spare Lockhart's life was not the final word, however. On March 3, 2011, Judge Jacob Walker, who presided over the trial, nullified the jury's recommendation of life without parole and sentenced Lockhart to death by lethal injection.

In a lengthy decision, the judge wrote that Lockhart deserved death because of evidence of other crimes not presented by prosecutors during his trial. Had the jury heard these "additional facts," he wrote, "their sentencing recommendation would likely have differed."

In virtually all 35 states that allow the death penalty, juries are the supreme arbiter of whether capital defendants live or die. But not in Alabama. Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty after a four-year ban, Alabama judges have held the power to overturn the sentencing recommendations of juries in capital cases.

Since then, state judges have overturned 107 jury decisions in capital cases, and in 92 percent of those cases, jury recommendations of life imprisonment were rejected in favor of death sentences, according to a new report by the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit law firm based in Montgomery, Ala.

The group's report is strongly critical of the practice, calling it arbitrary and lacking meaningful standards or oversight.

"No capital sentencing procedure in the United States has come under more criticism as unreliable, unpredictable and arbitrary than the unique Alabama practice of permitting elected trial judges to override jury verdicts of life and impose death sentences," it states.

Alabama has the highest per capita death sentencing rate in the country; last year, the state, with a population of 4.5 million, sentenced more offenders to death than Texas, with a population of nearly 25 million. And more than one in five prisoners now on death row in Alabama are there because of judicial override of jury decisions, the report found.

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Source: Huffington