State Lawmakers Should Pass “Jury of Our Peers” Act
David R. Jones, La Nueva Mayoria / The New Majority
Trial by jury is a pillar of our democracy. It provides citizens with one of the greatest and most meaningful civic responsibilities. Just as the opportunity to cast a vote in a free and fair election is a precious commodity – one that countless Americans have fought and died to protect throughout our history – jury service is also a cornerstone of our democratic process that should protected as a basic constitutional right. New York, however, is one of only a few states in the country with a very stringent law that usurps this right from people with felony convictions. It’s time for state legislators to right this wrong by passing the Jury of Our Peers Act.
The right to full civic participation for all New Yorkers is a core value for my organization, Community Service Society of New York (CSS). CSS began the drive to register and empower voters in the 1980s when the late Richie Perez, a community activist and former member of the Young Lords, started our Voter Participation Project (VPP) in the Bushwick-Cypress Hill sections of Brooklyn. In the decades since, our efforts have registered hundreds of thousands of voters in low-income communities, reversed discriminatory voter purges, and helped people with conviction histories get back their rights to vote and serve on a jury.
In 2021, New York passed legislation to restore the right to vote to people with felonyconvictions automatically upon release from prison. Unfortunately, many of these New Yorkers cannot exercise their other equally important civic right of serving on a jury. According to a 2021 report by the Data Collaborative for Justice (DCJ), there are still nearly 1 million New Yorkers who cannot serve on a jury; nearly two-thirds of whom are Black or Latinx.
This disqualification has deeper implications in the functioning of our democratic system. First, we need to consider that one of the byproducts of our history of racially discriminatory law enforcement, which translates into higher arrest rates among people of color than their white counterparts, is the systematic exclusion of more people of color with felony convictions from the jury pool. This in turn reduces the diversity of the jury pool, making it more susceptible to racial prejudice that perpetuates racial disparities in our criminal system.
Equally damaging is the negative effect that the current law has in promoting the successful reentry of individuals with felony convictions into our society. Research shows that people whose civil rights have been restored are substantially less likely to reoffend. By severing their right to participate in jury service, we’re sending a powerful message of mistrust in their moral character and ability to rehabilitate, and ultimately denying them the opportunity for a second chance.
Our state has moved closer to realizing the dream of a second chance for people who have paid their debt to society by the recent passage of Clean Slate and Fair Chance for Housing Acts. But when it comes to jury service equality we are out of step with our peers. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia either never exclude people with felony convictions from jury service or provide for automatic restoration of eligibility after a set time. Even conservative states like Florida changed its law to restore the right to serve on a jury to people with felonies who had completed their sentences.
I think we can all agree that New Yorkers should have at least the same level of civil rights as citizens of Ron DeSantis’ Florida. The ball is now on the court of legislators to restore the right of New Yorkers with felony convictions to serve on juries and instill racial justice within our courts.