Video – Attorney Spencer Freeman Explains If A Jury Of 12 Of Your Peers Really Happens in Court? Take A Guess?

Spencer Freeman – Criminal Defense Attorney – Pierce County, WA

“That’s a whole other interesting subject though, because a jury appears in that case…my client was a 19-year-old African-American kid…man. Our jury pool, when we first got our jury, the venire was of 60 people. Three of them were African-American. By the time that we got whittled down to the 12 that were actually going to decide the case, none were African-American. None were from the area, the county that he was from. None were his age. You got to look at that…is that really a jury of your peers? Nobody understood how he grew up, and why he may have made the decisions that he made.”

Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media

“That raises a whole new area of discussion. That is…when you pick a jury, when you are able to get down to it (12), is it truly representative of that person? But if it’s not, what can you do about it? You can’t?”

Spencer Freeman – Criminal Defense Attorney – Pierce County, WA

“There’s not much you can do about it. I think the more accurate term, rather than ‘jury selection’, would be ‘jury deselection’. When we’re picking a jury, I’m not going through there picking who I want, I’m going through there and figuring out who would be the absolute worst for my case, to hear my case, and kick them off. And then you’re left with what you’re left with. And there’s not much you can do about it. Prosecutors aren’t supposed to kick people off their jury simply because of race. They’ve got to have a reason to justify it. But that’s not a very high bar. In our case that I described, the prosecutor did kick off the one remaining African-American that was on the case. Did kick that person off. There was enough of a justification. Although we challenged that, the Judge let him kick that person off.”