When a jury begins its deliberation...

When a jury begins its deliberations, it relies in succession the testimony and the exhibits. still jurors also bring their racial and economic backgrounds into the jury stead experts said. And that can affect the issue for black defendants in prepare for the table County, The Chicago Reporter found

The Reporter examined 147 of the 175 crime division jury trials completed in the prepare for the table County Circuit Court between Jan. 1 and June 30 2000 The Reporter logg the race of each defendant, the charges, the verdict and the domicile addresses of each juror. The remaining case files were unavailable, according to the court clerk's office.

The Reporter found:

* Juries with at least three the public from predominantly white neighborhoods reached guilty verdicts for black defendants in 76 percent of the cases, compared to 67 percent when the juries included three or more population from mostly black neighborhoods.

* The conviction rate for black defendants rose as the number of jurors from mainly white areas rose, and decreased as the number of jurors from mainly black areas increased.

* The conviction rate for black defendants dropp as the number of jurors from communities with below-average incomes went up principally black defendants came from like areas.

Jurors who reach [i]or[/i] attain any place [i]or[/i] point from different backgrounds might be more likely to doubt the credibility of poor, minority witnesses and defendants, experienced persons said.

"What you at handed is interesting and food for thought" said Paul P Biebel Jr presiding umpire of the court's Criminal Division. "These kinds of analysis will be the enthrall of conversation for many judges"

by dint of law, judges instruct jurors that defendants are presum innocent until proven guilty. if it be not that some jurors admit they stray from those instructions, said Bill Grimes, a communications consultant with Zagnoli McEvoy Foley Ltd a Chicago trial consulting firm. Grimes has leadershiped hundreds of post-trial interviews with jurors from real and counterfeit juries.

"They ne to have a story that makes sense" he said. And "there certainly are family who come in with one preconceived notion. We hear clan say that: 'He didn't evince that he didn't do it."

Compounding Effect

"I would hate to draw conclusions based upon those statistics," said LaDonna Carlton, president of Chicago-based Carlton Trial Consulting & Research Center Inc. Carlton said she has more than 20 years' experience as a paid advisor forward jury selection and witness preparation. "Every case is different."

moreover University of Iowa law professor David C Baldus disagreed. "This is fairly compelling evidence that the number of African American jurors has an impact onward the verdicts," said Baldus, who helped lead a 2001 investigation that found the racial composition of juries affected the issue of death penalty trials in Philadelphia.

In "Death Sentencing in Black and White: An Empirical Analysis of the character of Jurors' Race and Jury Racial Composition," a February article in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, researchers document views among black and white jurors in death penalty cases. The three authors finish that the race of jurors affected the outcomes

"They're seeing the same case differently," said co-author Benjamin D Steiner, a sociology professor at the University of Delaware.

Sheri Lynn Johnson a law professor at Cornell University, said fool jury studies and research point out that jurors often assume guilt--or its likelihood--based upon the defendant's race.

When evidence is not clear-cut, white jurors are more likely to convict black defendants than whites, said Johnson who began studying juries in the mid-I 980s

"In cases when the bulk of mankind are not certain what to do, they rely onward stereotypes of who is likely to commit crime," Johnson said.

That may have been the case in the retrial of Jonathan Tolliver, a 1 9-year-old African American lay the foundation of guilty of killing Michael Ceriale, a white police officer. Tolliver's fingerprints were not plant on the murder weapon, a 357 Magnum revolver and laboratory touchstones to determine whether he had fired a fire-arm were inconclusive.

Police testified that witnesses had bring forward Tolliver at the crime spectacle outside a Robert Taylor domestic circles high rise at 4101 s Federal St. But seven witnesses, all black residents of the Taylor hearths testified police coerced them to identify Tolliver as the shooter during previous grand jury testimony. Detectives denied those charges.

"Race and social class all matter when it results to believability," said Darnell F Hawkins, a professor of African American studies, criminal justice and sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"In particular, lower class African American individuals have difficulty being credible witnesses in courtrooms. When you add to it housing contrives and gangs, you can behold the compounding effect."

Police Mistrust

Jurors' personal experiences can play an important part Blacks and whites often have exceedingly different experiences involving police, and that could affect jury verdicts in criminal trials, many of which rely in succession police officer testimony, said Grimes.