Florida Study Documents Disproportionate Exclusion of Black Jurors in Jacksonville Death Penalty Cases

2/3 of Black women and more than 1/2 of Black men have been struck from jury service in Duval County death penalty cases, more than double the rate at which white prospective jurors are excluded, a study of capital jury selection in the Florida county has found.

The study, Racialized Impacts of Death Disqualification in Duval County, Florida, conducted by University of Central Florida criminal justice professor Dr. Jacinta M. Gau, was the centerpiece of a challenge to the county’s capital-case jury selection practices brought by lawyers for the ACLU on behalf of Dennis Glover in his capital resentencing trial. Glover was unconstitutionally sentenced to death by a Duval County judge in 2015 following a non-unanimous sentencing recommendation by his jury. On October 21, 2022, State Attorney Melissa Nelson withdrew the death penalty from Glover’s case, avoiding a hearing on the jury issue, and the court resentenced Glover to life without parole.

Dr. Gau reviewed transcripts and other materials relating to 1,042 prospective jurors called for jury duty in the 12 capital cases tried in Duval County from 2010 through 2018 to determine the extent to which the combination of death-qualification and discretionary jury strikes affected the composition of death penalty juries in the county. She found that the practice of “death qualification” — the removal of potential jurors from service in a capital case because of their expressed opposition to the death penalty — “disproportionately excluded people of color, and Black people … in particular.” The prosecution’s exercise of discretionary strikes “also exclude a sizeable percentage of Black venire persons,” Gau found, with Black women again the group most likely to be excluded, followed closely by Black men.

Discriminatory jury selection was just one of several major issues presented in Glover’s case. He has consistently maintained his innocence in the murder of his neighbor, Sandra Allen. His lawyers say that school records and IQ tests demonstrate that he is intellectually disabled and therefore should never have been eligible for a death sentence. His 2015 death sentence was imposed after a 10-2 jury recommendation, but it was overturned in 2017 after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida’s sentencing scheme. For five years, State Attorney Melissa Nelson rejected Glover’s requests to waive the death penalty, insisting that she would only do so if he admitted his guilt.

Gau’s study found that the death qualification process removed jurors of color at significantly higher rates than white jurors. 33.8% of Black potential jurors were excluded by death qualification, along with 38.0% of other jurors of color, while only 15.5% of white jurors were excluded. Gau found that the combination of death qualification and discretionary strikes disproportionately disenfranchised Black jurors and was particularly discriminatory against Black women. “[F]ully two thirds of Black women otherwise eligible, qualified, and willing to serve were excluded by the combination of death qualification and prosecutor peremptory strikes, as were 55% of Black men,” she wrote.

Gau’s results are consistent with a recent study of death qualification in North Carolina. Researchers from Michigan State University studied jury selection in Wake County (Raleigh) from 2008 to 2019. The researchers found statistically significant evidence of racial disparities in death qualification, with Black potential jurors removed “at 2.16 times the rate of their white counterparts.” That research was submitted as part of a challenge to death qualification on behalf of Brandon Xavier Hill, who is facing capital charges in Wake County.

Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Staff, October 28, 2022

🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

California | Becerra vows to extend moratorium despite past support for capital punishment

SACRAMENTO—Democrat Xavier Becerra defended the death penalty while serving as California’s attorney general, a punishment his office actively sought in the case of a gunman convicted of an Orange County mass shooting, but as the front-running candidate for governor, he has vowed to block executions if elected in November. Becerra said he will extend the blanket reprieve for all death row inmates that Gov. Gavin Newsom enacted by executive order in 2019, saying he supported “moving our state away from a costly, flawed system that disproportionately impacts Black and brown communities and too often gets it wrong.”

Iran | Afghan Citizen Executed in Wheelchair Due to Severe Mobility Disability

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Iranian authorities have reportedly executed an Afghan citizen, identified as Valijan Nourzay, at the central prison in Rafsanjan, according to the human rights organization Hengaw. Hengaw said in a statement on Sunday, September 6, that Nourzay was executed early Wednesday last week at Rafsanjan Central Prison. According to the organization, Nourzay had a severe mobility disability and was executed while in a wheelchair. Hengaw, citing informed sources, reported that Nourzay had been pursued by Iranian authorities three years ago over an alleged murder. He was reportedly seriously wounded after Iranian security forces opened fire on him in Rafsanjan before being arrested and later sentenced to death.

California | He spent 19 years on death row. His conversion to Judaism helped him endure

Johnny Morales struggled to find sleep. He dozed off for a few moments, but officers came to his death row cell and woke him a little after midnight. They needed to inventory and box up his belongings. He was leaving San Quentin. Hands cuffed behind his back, he walked across the empty upper yard in the dim gray hours before daylight. An officer walked alongside him step for step, black latex-gloved fingers holding onto Morales’s arm. For almost 20 years, Morales could only experience the world outside his 4-by-11 foot cell in the condemned housing unit like this—chained and escorted by officers. Security protocols required all death row residents be handcuffed or shackled any time they were out in open space with staff.

He Spent 27 Years on Death Row as a Wrongfully Convicted Man. What Comes Next?

23-hour solitary confinement. 115-degree heat. Jimmie Duncan is haunted by the decades he spent in Louisiana’s Angola Prison—and how, even after being released, he still isn’t truly free. Jimmie “Chris” Duncan wiped the sweat off his forehead as he assessed his temporary home from the parking lot of a rundown motel in central Louisiana. Sure, there’s drug dealing and prostitution, he said on a recent summer afternoon. And he suspected his neighbors were cooking meth on a floor below the room he paid $350 a week to rent.

Egypt TV presenter and 11 others sentenced to death in major drugs case

Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa and 11 others have been sentenced to death by hanging after being convicted of drug trafficking and rape, while nine defendants received life sentences and seven were acquitted. Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa, 39, has been sentenced to death by hanging along with 11 other defendants after being found guilty in a drugs case involving a criminal gang accused of importing ingredients used to manufacture narcotics for sale.

Florida executes Daniel Owen Conahan Jr.

In Florida’s 15th execution this year, man put to death for killing linked to ‘Hog Trail Murders’ A Florida man convicted in one of a series of suspected killings that became known as the “Hog Trail Murders” in the 1990s was put to death Thursday, becoming the state’s 15th person executed this year. Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. after receiving a 3-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He had been sentenced to die for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery, whose mutilated body was found in a wooded southwest Florida area where authorities found the remains of at least 6 people over a 3-year span.

Arizona AG seeks execution date for man convicted in 1995 trooper killing

Trooper Bob Martin was killed during a traffic stop on the Beeline highway; execution for his killer could be as soon as January PHOENIX (AZFamily)—The Arizona Attorney General is asking for an execution date to be set for a man convicted in the killing of an Arizona State Trooper over 30 years ago. On Aug. 15, 1995, Trooper Bob Martin was shot and killed while performing a traffic stop along the Beeline Highway.

Ex-corrections officials urge governor to commute Kansas death sentences

Former Kansas corrections officials are urging Governor Laura Kelly to grant clemency to the state's death row inmates. Former Kansas Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz has several reasons why he thinks the state should abolish the death penalty. Werholtz, who served as secretary from 2002 to 2010 and returned on an interim basis in 2019, uses his discussions with peers and family members of victims as well as experiences of seeing wrongly convicted people getting exonerated as his guiding points.

Florida executes Harold Gene Lucas

Florida state officials executed 74-year-old Harold Gene Lucas by lethal injection on Tuesday evening, concluding a 50-year legal saga stemming from the 1976 murder of a 16-year-old girl in Bonita Springs. STARKE, Fla. -- A man convicted of killing a teenage girl who rejected his romantic advances and wounding two of her friends was put to death Tuesday in the first of three executions planned this month in Florida. Harold Gene Lucas, 74, was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, authorities said. He was sentenced to death for the 1976 shooting attack on Jill Piper and the wounding of her friends, Richard Byrd Jr. and Terri Rice.

Inside and outside Oklahoma execution chamber, Tulsans stand on different sides of death penalty debate

Sheriff Vic Regalado and Father Bryan Brooks, pastor at the Church of Saint Benedict, are two men of influence in Tulsa County. They live different lives—one enveloped in faith, the other elected to lead a law enforcement agency of more than 600. Both were brought together by the death penalty. The men believe it is their duty to support families of victims but land on different sides of the aisle when it comes to executions. Regalado is in support of the death penalty, saying it is part of the criminal justice system and brings closure to the families of murder victims.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog