April 20, 2012 | 8:30 AM | By

The All-White Jury Pool Effect

Trials that start with all-white jury pools end up finding black defendants guilty 16 percent more often than white defendants. But having just one black person in the jury pool can alter that result, nearly closing the conviction gap.

That’s according to a Duke University-led study released this week, in which researchers examined more than 700 Florida cases.

“I think this is the first strong and convincing evidence that the racial composition of the jury pool actually has a major effect on trial outcomes,” senior author Patrick Bayer said in this video.

Check out Duke University’s infographic below, showing that conviction rates of black and white defendants are nearly identical when at least one black person is in a jury pool.

  • Elijah405

    Wow. So much for being ‘Post-Racial’, clearly we’ve still got a long way to go. Unfortunately, implicit bias is something that you cannot control, we also need to figure out and define how to actually try people by ‘a jury of their peers’. If we actually did, the demographic make up of a jury pool would look much different.