Curtis Flowers case: Justice requires colorblind jury selection

As a second-generation Mississippi lawyer who has practiced law in this state for more than 44 years, I am proud of how far our legal system has come since my father began practicing in Greenville in 1947 and since I began my legal career in 1975. 

It is no secret that Mississippi courts were too long a source of exclusion and injustice for African-Americans and we still have work to do in our quest for equality.  Yet we have made substantial progress toward eliminating overt racism from our legal system.  Because I care deeply for this state and am committed to the notion that our criminal justice system must be fair to all, I am unable to stand by silently when confronted with evidence of practices that would take us back to the darker days of our history.

At the heart of the American judicial system is the conviction that a small group of local citizens can fairly and impartially decide who is telling the truth, who is not, and who should be held responsible for behavior condemned by society. Our jury system depends on the integrity of both those chosen to serve as jurors and the lawyers who decide which local citizens are best suited to fill that role.

The American jury selection process allows lawyers to strike a certain number of people from the jury pool without having to give the specific reasons they believe those prospective jurors should not serve.  Years ago, the United States Supreme Court made clear that it is unconstitutional to use those juror “strikes” to eliminate people from juries solely because of their race.  For example, it is impermissible for a prosecutor to exclude African-American people from juries in criminal cases simply because the prosecutor believes that they are less likely to convict criminal defendants than are white jurors.

Earlier this year, the United States Supreme Court determined that a Mississippi district attorney has for decades been systematically excluding African-American prospective jurors solely because of their race.  The decision, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, was based on a comprehensive review of the district attorney’s juror strikes made over the course of his career and was issued in a capital murder case in which a defendant has been tried six times for the same alleged crime despite repeated findings that the district attorney behaved improperly. News of this decision disturbed me, and I am compelled to denounce this conduct in the strongest possible terms.

Stated simply, I refuse to go back to the days when our African-American neighbors and friends had their fates decided exclusively by white judges and all-white juries. I refuse to accept blatant disregard for the law in an effort to gain an unfair advantage in the most serious of cases.  I refuse to rationalize that such behavior is “business as usual” in criminal cases and that we should blindly trust elected prosecutors eager to please local voters. I know too many honest prosecutors who do things in faithful adherence to the law to believe that we must condone such behavior.

I am aware that a group of civil rights lawyers has filed a lawsuit challenging the conduct of the Mississippi prosecutor criticized by the United States Supreme Court for race-based jury selection, and I trust that justice will be done in that case. That said, the findings of the United States Supreme Court alone are enough to convince me that we must remain vigilant in our fight to keep Mississippi moving forward rather than backward.  We must commit ourselves to the truth that the ability to be a fair and impartial juror has everything to do with honesty and integrity and nothing to do with race. 

We must stand together and condemn the exclusion of people from juries solely because of the color of their skin. If we fail to do so, we live down to the stereotype others have of our great state, we increase the chance that more innocent people will pay the heavy price of racism and injustice, and we send the message to Mississippi prosecutors that we will accept that which is unacceptable. 

We’re better than that.       

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Roy Campbell is a Jackson lawyer and former Mississippi Bar Association president.