Executive Summary—Inequitable and Undemocratic: A Research Brief on Jury Exclusion in Massachusetts and a Multipronged Approach to Dismantle It

Executive Summary—Inequitable and Undemocratic: A Research Brief on Jury Exclusion in Massachusetts and a Multipronged Approach to Dismantle It June 2023 Executive Summary—Inequitable and Undemocratic: A Research Brief on Jury Exclusion in Massachusetts and a Multipronged Approach to Dismantle It Prepared by Katy Naples-Mitchell and Haruka Margaret Braun for the Jury Selection Working Group of the. [...] The majority of states, rooted in a tradition of English common law that was modified and codified in the Jim Crow era, continue to exclude people with felony records from jury service, but a handful of outlier states offer a radically different vision of jury composition (see Research Brief at 3.) Part III takes stock of the current landscape of felony charging and sentencing in Massachusetts and. [...] Still, the disqualification results in a period of exclusion in the community for the vast majority of people sentenced for felony offenses, even those sentenced to periods in state prison. [...] In court systems like Massachusetts, court officials routinely exclude people with any kind of criminal record, or people with loved ones with a criminal record, from the jury venire (the pool of people called to jury service from which a jury is chosen) through mechanisms like for cause challenges (removing a juror who cannot be impartial or comprehend the proceedings) and peremptory strikes (rem. [...] Turning next to de facto exclusions, the brief proposes revising the jury questionnaire to focus less on a person’s criminal history or the criminal histories of their social ties and more on their individualized biases; creating new rules to limit requests by prosecutors or defense attorneys to run the criminal records of prospective jurors; codifying rules that prevent “for cause” challenges fro.