NY’s highest court considers whether Queens prosecutors discriminated against Black jurors

Published Apr 22, 2024 at 6:30 a.m. ET

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Published Apr 22, 2024 at 6:30 a.m. ET

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Queens prosecutors are facing difficult questions in the state’s highest court about two trials in which they are accused of illegally blocking Black people from serving on juries.

In oral arguments before the state Court of Appeals last week, attorneys for two Black men, both of whom were charged with robberies, argued that prosecutors had screened out prospective jurors based on racial bias.

The Queen’s District Attorney’s Office defended its decision, saying lawyers had legitimate reasons for blocking the prospective jurors.

The hearings come on the heels of several recent rulings that found Queens prosecutors illegally barred people from serving on juries because of their race or religion. A group of law professors filed ethics complaints against six lawyers in the office last year. The office has also faced scrutiny following the discovery of jury selection notes from the 1990s that instructed prosecutors not to pick “Hispanics,” “grandmotherly types” or jurors from certain neighborhoods.

“What's at stake is the right for people of color, especially Black people, to serve as jurors, and for accused people to get fair juries hearing the evidence in their case,” said Peter Santina, managing attorney of Civil Rights Corps’ Prosecutorial Accountability Project. “These are fundamental questions to the legal system.”

A spokesperson for the Queens DA’s office said under the current administration prosecutors are trained extensively in the law and principles surrounding discrimination during the jury selection process.

“We have, in that training, made unequivocally clear to all [assistant district attorneys] that no form of discrimination in jury selection will be tolerated,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “And when we have found the suggestion of discrimination in jury selection in cases that were tried before this administration based on new evidence, we have taken the initiative to see that those convictions were vacated.

One of the cases involves Freddie Wright, who is appealing a conviction for a 2017 robbery at a Queens Taco Bell. That conviction landed him in prison for 10 years. Prosecutors said Wright ordered an employee to empty the cash from two registers while he held a sharp object to her neck, according to a case summary from the Court of Appeals. Police arrested him a few blocks away, and two Taco Bell employees identified him as the robber, according to the case summary.

Wright’s appellate attorney, Chelsea Lopez, said most of the perpetrator’s face was covered during the robbery, and the witnesses only identified her client because he had dark skin and was wearing a red hoodie. She said prosecutors violated her client’s right to a fair trial by screening out two Black jurors because of their race.

Prosecutors said during jury selection for the trial that a Black man whose cousin had been arrested more than a decade earlier on marijuana possession charges should not serve on the jury because of that relationship. They also argued that he should not serve because he rented his home, had no kids and was not married.

“Renting in an expensive place like New York City, being unmarried and having no children [are] factually irrelevant to the facts of the case or an ability to serve,” Lopez told the Court of Appeals.

Prosecutors also struck a Black woman off the jury who worked for the Department of Probation in Family Court, because they said her job might make her sympathetic to a criminal defendant — a decision Assistant District Attorney Danielle O’Boyle defended during oral arguments Thursday. O’Boyle said in her argument that it’s common for prosecutors to screen out people who work in professions that may make them more sympathetic to people accused of crimes, including teachers.

“The prosecutor absolutely had reason to doubt that she could set that aside,” O’Boyle told the court.

The second case involves charges against Dwane Estwick, who is appealing his conviction in a 2015 mugging in Queens. That conviction resulted in a 12-year prison sentence. Police said a witness watched Estwick knock someone unconscious with a brick or rock and then go through the victim’s pockets. They arrested Estwick in the yard of a nearby house, where they also found the victim’s wallet.

During jury selection at his trial, prosecutors screened out a Black woman working for the police department who said she had served on a jury in Brooklyn nearly two decades earlier. Prosecutors never explicitly explained why they didn’t want the woman to serve on the jury. The trial judge said at the time that the prosecutor “got a bad vibe” from her responses to questions about her prior jury service.

Appellate attorney Martin Sawyer said a “bad vibe” wasn’t enough of a reason to strike a juror and could be code for racial discrimination.

“A genuine bigot could have a bad vibe about someone that arises from bigotry,” he said.

Assistant District Attorney Danielle Fenn said prosecutors were concerned with the jurors’ demeanor — an explanation that the judges questioned repeatedly, because prosecutors never provided their own explicit reason beyond the judge’s comment about the juror’s “bad vibe.”

Attorneys in a case are allotted a certain number of peremptory challenges, where they may object to a prospective juror without assigning any reason at all. After exhausting their peremptory challenges, however, attorneys questioned about why they want to block someone from serving are required to justify their decision. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that those decisions cannot be based on a juror’s race, gender or religion. Studies have found that more diverse juries are better at deliberating and reaching fair verdicts.

New York Civil Liberties Union Staff Attorney Ify Chikezie, who co-authored an amicus brief in support of Wright’s case, said New York should follow the lead of several other states, including New Jersey, Washington and California, that have strengthened protections for diversity in juries.

“The constitution ensures the right for individuals to be tried by juries of their peers,” she said in an interview. “To ensure fairness within the courts, the health of New York's legal system, I think we all should care about equitable representation on juries.”

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Samantha reports on whether New Yorkers feel safe and whether the institutions that are supposed to protect them are working. Before coming to WNYC/Gothamist, she spent three years covering the criminal justice system in Tennessee for Nashville Public Radio. Her reporting on Nashville's police department received multiple awards, including the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. Samantha was also part of the inaugural class of Report for America, a service journalism program that sends up-and-coming reporters to local newsrooms across the country. She is a Northwestern University grad, a Baltimore native and fluent in Spanish. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 410-925-6766.

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