{"id":170988,"date":"2021-03-31T12:45:20","date_gmt":"2021-03-31T16:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=170988"},"modified":"2021-03-31T12:55:02","modified_gmt":"2021-03-31T16:55:02","slug":"school-of-law-symposium-addresses-jury-selection-and-implicit-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2021\/03\/school-of-law-symposium-addresses-jury-selection-and-implicit-bias\/","title":{"rendered":"School of Law Symposium Addresses Jury Selection and Implicit Bias"},"content":{"rendered":"

All-white juries are more than 15 per cent more likely to convict a Black defendant than a white\u00a0defendant,\u00a0but the presence of even one juror of color closes the gap,\u00a0Professor Lauren McLane\u00a0told the audience at\u00a0the\u00a0Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal\u2019s annual\u00a0symposium.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe all-white jury and a lynch mob have a lot in common,\u201d\u00a0she\u00a0said.\u00a0In both cases\u00a0a\u00a0type of\u00a0group-think develops, a dynamic\u00a0that\u00a0can be\u00a0disrupted by\u00a0\u00a0diversifying the group\u2019s membership, she said.<\/p>\n

McLane,\u00a0director\u00a0the Defender Aid Clinic at the University of Wyoming College of Law,\u00a0gave the symposium\u2019s keynote address and\u00a0challenged white lawyers to confront their own racism\u00a0and implicit bias.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to reject this notion of color-blindness and have real, honest conversations about race in this profession,\u201d McLane said. \u201cThe costs of doing this work are emotional and mental, not monetary.\u201d<\/p>\n

The symposium, entitled\u00a0\u201cDoes an Impartial Jury Exist? An Analysis of Implicit Bias in Jury Selection,\u201d\u00a0\u00a0was held online on March 26, 2021.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0panel\u00a0of\u00a0three Connecticut Supreme Court justices —\u00a0Chief Justice Richard Robinson\u00a0and Justices\u00a0\u00a0Raheem Mullins and\u00a0Maria\u00a0Kahn —\u00a0discussed the case law establishing\u00a0the\u00a0jury selection processes in Connecticut.\u00a0\u00a0Mullins\u00a0\u00a0said racial bias is so pervasive in jury selection\u00a0that\u00a0the only solution may be to remove\u00a0preemptory challenges, which\u00a0permit\u00a0lawyers\u00a0to\u00a0reject\u00a0potential jurors without giving a reason.<\/p>\n

\u201cPreemptory challenges are fraught with implicit bias,\u201d\u00a0he\u00a0said,\u00a0adding later that\u00a0\u00a0there may be innovative ways of solving the problem without eliminating the\u00a0challenge\u00a0completely.<\/p>\n

Another\u00a0panel\u00a0explored the impact of biased juries\u00a0through a\u00a0conversation among\u00a0Douglas Lavine ’77, a judge on the Connecticut Appellate Court;\u00a0attorney\u00a0and adjunct UConn Law Professor\u00a0Wesley Horton\u00a0\u201970;\u00a0Professor Jane Gordon\u00a0of the UConn Department of Political Science;\u00a0and UConn Law Professor Jamelia Morgan.<\/p>\n

Professor Timothy Fisher, the journal\u2019s faculty adviser, said he was impressed by the lineup of speakers and panels that\u00a0the student organizers, Bianca\u00a0LoGiurato ’21 and Celena Stoia ’21, brought on board.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe symposium demonstrated the origins and harms of systemic exclusion of African Americans from jury service,\u201d Fisher said.\u00a0 \u201cAt the same time it showed the steps that can make Connecticut a national leader in providing parties with a jury of their peers while extending full citizenship rights to all Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three Connecticut Supreme Court justices and a judge of the Connecticut Appellate Court joined legal scholars and professionals at the Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal\u2019s\u00a0annual\u00a0symposium.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":170990,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1857],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1856],"class_list":["post-170988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 04:42:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170988"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170997,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170988\/revisions\/170997"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/170990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170988"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=170988"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=170988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}