This partial transcript was computer-generated. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.
ALEXIS MADRIGAL: Welcome to Forum. I’m Alexis Madrigal. Juries, like public libraries, are one of those artifacts of an earlier era of civic life. They’re hard to imagine anyone inventing now. But the jury is a key part of our system of justice — and one that, amid increasing income and wealth disparities, has become more unfair.
Fewer and fewer people with the life experience of many defendants are ever impaneled on a jury, and the evidence suggests that Black defendants in particular suffer when the jury room is not diverse. Filmmaker Abby Ginzberg has a short new documentary you can watch on Apple TV about the issue. It’s called Judging Juries.
Welcome to Forum, Abby.
ABBY GINZBERG: Thank you for having us. Yeah.
ALEXIS MADRIGAL: We’re also joined by several of the people in the documentary.
We’ve got Brendon Woods, Alameda County Public Defender. Welcome.
BRENDON WOODS: Good morning. Thank you for having me.
ALEXIS MADRIGAL: We’ve got Anne Stuhldreher, who’s senior adviser with the San Francisco Treasurer’s Office. Welcome.
ANNE STUHLDREHER: Good morning.
ALEXIS MADRIGAL: And we’ve got Manohar Raju, who is the San Francisco County Public Defender. Welcome.
MANOHAR RAJU: Good morning.
ALEXIS MADRIGAL: So, Abby, set us up here. How did you first become aware of this issue? What made you want to make a film about jury diversity?
ABBY GINZBERG: Several years ago, there was an article in The Chronicle written by Justin Phillips that profiled the advocacy and other work that Brendon Woods was doing in Alameda County, from the point of view of being the chief public defender. And it discussed the inequities in the jury system.
And it made me sort of want to learn more. I had started my career long before I became a documentary filmmaker as a trial lawyer, primarily in San Francisco. And during that time, running criminal trials, I was able to get a diverse jury. So it rang a bell for me — how things had changed, and how I didn’t really understand what was going on.
I wanted to learn more. So I called — called Brendon and said, “I’m a filmmaker. I’m really interested in the work you’re doing. Can we have a longer conversation?” And that literally launched the project.
The first shoot we did is what opens the film, which is a conversation and a kind of class that Brendon was teaching at Oakland High School. We filmed that Law and Social Justice Academy class, and you begin to see why there’s not a lot of participation in juries from the students — who all raised their hands about how they never wanted to serve on a jury.
So I’m like, okay — we need to bring civics back into high schools, along with bringing diversity back onto juries.
ALEXIS MADRIGAL: Yeah. Brendon, what do you say to the kids? What makes it difficult to have diverse juries, or juries that reflect the cities or counties they’re in?
BRENDON WOODS: God. There are so many reasons why it’s difficult to have a diverse jury. I think one of the first things is how we call people in to serve.
Jurors are composed of lists of people who either have driver’s licenses or are registered voters. So that’s kind of the first barrier. And then, as you move along the way, there are so many barriers that exclude people.
We’ll talk about pay. We’ll talk about the process with regard to why prosecutors might remove certain people. And unfortunately, when they do that, it’s often removing people of color — Black people, brown people.
ALEXIS MADRIGAL: Yeah. I mean, the film mentions that Black people are struck from juries 72 percent of the time through peremptory challenges, while white people are struck a fraction of a percent. Is that the right number?
BRENDON WOODS: Yeah. Those are the correct numbers.
So part of the reason why I got interested in this work around jury diversity was from trying cases in Oakland — trying felony cases and walking into a courtroom. You’re like: my client’s Black, I’m Black. Where are all the Black people? They were not there.
And so you’re going through the system where you’re really trying to fight for justice for people accused of crimes, and then there’s no one sitting in judgment of them who looks like them or is from their community or has the same experience as they do.
So that’s what really got me interested in this work — trying to change the dynamics of how we pick juries in California, in the nation, and state.
ALEXIS MADRIGAL: Yeah. Mano, in your career in San Francisco as a public defender, does this all track with what you’ve seen? Has it changed through time?
MANOHAR RAJU: It’s tracking — and it’s actually been getting worse. I started my practice in Contra Costa County as a line attorney there. And there the issue was that all of the felony trials were in Martinez. But the counties are very dispersed, right? There are events that happened in Richmond, cases that originate in Pittsburg. But they were using those courts in Pittsburg and in Richmond for misdemeanor trials. All the felony trials were happening in Martinez.
So you’d have a client from Richmond show up in Martinez for a trial, turn around and say, “What’s going on here? This doesn’t look like a jury of my peers at all.”
With soaring real estate prices and gentrification, the percentage of people of color has gone down — and that’s led to the decrease in diversity in our juries.
ALEXIS MADRIGAL: Yeah. Brendon, what does that mean for defendants? Is this a marginal difference if you have one Black person on the jury? Does it mean a lot? Is it just sorta, okay, that’s a little bit helpful?
BRENDON WOODS: The studies have shown that when there is at least one Black person in a jury pool, the conviction rates for white people and Black people are almost identical, at about 70 percent.
When you have no Black people in a jury pool, it’s amazing — as you can imagine, Black people are convicted at a much higher rate, about 81 percent, and white people are convicted at a lower rate, about 61 percent.So the presence of just one Black person completely equalizes the conviction rate. Just one.
And then, when we think about the system and trying to bring some sort of legitimacy — real legitimacy — to justice and the way people interpret injustice: imagine being charged with a crime. Imagine going through the system, being arrested and incarcerated and prosecuted, and not having anyone there who looks like you.
I mean, that doesn’t bring any sort of semblance of justice.
ALEXIS MADRIGAL: Abby, when you were — obviously that stat about the equalization of conviction rates seems enormously important. What’s the theory of the case about why having just a single Black person in the jury room might make such a big difference?
ABBY GINZBERG: Well, the significance is that — there’s a confusion in people’s minds about what a “jury of your peers” is really entitling you to.
What we want is a jury that is representative of the community from which you come. So having even one or two Black people from Oakland on a jury is different than having no Black people — or no people of color — on a jury in Oakland.
Why I think it’s significant: when you do a mock jury where you get people off the street, just as a lawyer trying to decide which arguments will work, the biases people bring into the jury room are unbelievable. And they can be as basic as: “Most Black people — you wouldn’t be here unless you had committed the crime.”
So the ability to listen to the evidence and decide the case based solely on the evidence — people are not coming in with that orientation, no matter how many times the judge says it.
So having somebody who looks like the defendant, trying to say some things about racism during jury deliberations, really — I believe — really makes a difference. And without that representation, everybody’s left with their own prejudices.
ALEXIS MADRIGAL: Anne, let’s talk a little bit about the barriers that aren’t prosecutors excluding people — but people excluding themselves.
When you were looking at this issue in San Francisco, what did you hear from potential jurors in low-income communities about why they couldn’t serve?
ANNE STUHLDREHER: Yeah. We were hearing from all of our justice partners that so many people with low incomes could not afford to serve.
In California, we pay people fifteen dollars a day to serve on a jury. For a lot of people, their employer covers their jury service, so they continue to draw a paycheck. But let’s say you work at a restaurant or a small business. Let’s say you drive for Lyft or Uber. Let’s say you’re self-employed.
If you serve, you are giving up your day’s wage. And as we were listening to our justice partners and community groups, we realized: you shouldn’t have to choose between your financial well-being and fulfilling your civic duty. And if we want equal access to justice, we need equal access to the jury box.
ALEXIS MADRIGAL: Yeah. I mean, fifteen dollars a day couldn’t pay for parking. You could get charged that much. It’s absurd. So what did you try to do about it?
ANNE STUHLDREHER: Yeah. So again, we came together with all of our justice partners.
ALEXIS MADRIGAL: And by that you mean the DA as well as public defenders?
ANNE STUHLDREHER: I do want to emphasize that District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has been a collaborator and supportive of this from day one. And as you know, in San Francisco, we don’t always agree on everything. So that we have our DA, our public defender, the Superior Courts, the Bar Association — everyone agreed we needed to fix this.
So we decided to try to remove that financial barrier to serving. We came up with a program called “Be the Jury,” and it pays folks, at the beginning, $100 a day to serve on a jury. To be eligible, you need to have a low or moderate income and have your employer not cover your jury service. So it’s targeted to the folks who face this financial barrier.
ALEXIS MADRIGAL: And what did you see happen when you started to roll it out?
ANNE STUHLDREHER: I would say that it really exceeded our expectations and showed that when you remove that financial barrier, people really can and want to serve.
Now, about 11 percent of all jurors who serve in San Francisco receive a Be the Jury stipend. Since we started, about 4,800 jurors have served under this program.
Evaluations have shown it increased the racial and economic diversity of who’s in the jury box. The average income is about $40,000 — so it’s folks at the lower end of the income spectrum. And about 80 percent of people said they couldn’t have served without it.
ALEXIS MADRIGAL: Wow. We’re talking about juries, jury dismissals, lack of financial support — how those things keep people of color off juries and how that impacts the entire justice system.
We’re joined by Anne Stuhldreher, senior adviser in the San Francisco Treasurer’s Office. We’ve got filmmaker Abby Ginzberg; her documentary short Judging Juries airs on KQED tomorrow at 9 p.m. If you want to watch it early, you can go on Apple TV. We’ve also got Brendon Woods, Alameda County Public Defender, and Manohar Raju, San Francisco County Public Defender.
We also want to hear about your experiences out there. Have you ever served on a jury? What was your experience? How’d you think about the system? Do you dread jury summons? Are you excited about getting that jury summons?
