July 29,1997

Jury race makeup a concern in trials.

I have a concern about The Oakland Press oversimplifying the problems judges face regarding the under-representation of African Americans in jury panels in Detroit ("Everyone is entitled to service on jury, regardless of skin color," July 15). Contrary to your assertion, the Eastern District is not "removing" white potential jurors from jury lists to cross-sectional representation.

Whites are recycled into succeeding representation.

People should not be excluded from jury service because of skin color. The problem is in fulfilling the statutory requirement that jury panels be drawn from a representative cross-section of the community. The process begins with random selection from voting and driver’s license lists. Left to chance, jury panels generally reflect a ratio of one African-American person to 10 white people, while the ratio in the community is about 1 to 5.

African-Americans do not have to be judged by African-American jurors for a trial to be fair.

The concern is with the perception of unfairness that exists when roughly 50 percent of the defendants in criminal cases are African-American and jury panels reflect a significantly lower percentage of African-Americans. There is an element of distrust among many African-Americans regarding their ability to receive a fair trial in our criminal justice system. This is a dilemma.

Hopefully, changes being made in the way voter lists are maintained will assure a fairer ratio.

Avern Cohn

Federal District Court Judge