batson
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Appeals court pushes back against racial bias in jury selection
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Colorado’s second-highest court laid down new rules on Thursday to discourage the exclusion of people of color from juries for reasons that, while not explicitly racial, are nevertheless correlated with race. Two separate panels of the state’s Court of Appeals issued rulings that, in part, forbid the dismissal of Black jurors solely because they reveal…
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Appeals court upholds dismissal of Hispanic juror for believing justice system is racist
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Colorado’s second-highest court found no problem with the prosecution dismissing a Hispanic man from an Arapahoe County jury because of his observation that the judicial system is unfair to racial minorities. But for defendant Dustin Aaron Schwarz, the exclusion of the man from his jury exemplified a larger concern that people of color are being…
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Appeals court finds no error in dismissal of Black juror from El Paso County case
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Colorado’s second-highest court has determined an El Paso County judge appropriately allowed prosecutors to dismiss a Black juror from a criminal trial for reasons other than his race. The U.S. Supreme Court recognized in the 1986 decision of Batson v. Kentucky that juror dismissals, or strikes, motivated by a juror’s race are unconstitutional. Consequently, trial judges evaluate…
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Judicial committee secretly debates proposal to address racial bias in jury selection
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A committee of the Colorado Supreme Court met behind closed doors on Friday to discuss two proposals for curtailing the exclusion of people of color from juries based on explicit or implicit racial bias. The renewed effort comes months after legislation to accomplish the same goal died in the legislature in the wake of opposition…
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Appeals court upholds convictions following claims of racial bias in jury selection
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Colorado’s second-highest court upheld the convictions of two criminal defendants who alleged prosecutors improperly dismissed jurors of color from their trials, although one appellate judge believed a lower court had failed to properly evaluate the potential for discrimination. Each appeal in the cases of Eve Martinez out of Weld County and D’Shay Damu Evans out…
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Lawmakers urge Supreme Court committee to address racial bias in jury selection
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Four Democratic lawmakers have written to the Colorado Supreme Court’s criminal rules committee urging it to address racial bias in jury selection following resistance from prosecutors to a legislative proposal on the subject. Last month, the sponsors of Senate Bill 128 declined to move forward with their legislation after all 22 elected district attorneys registered…
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State Supreme Court to hear criminal appeals involving racial bias, jury instructions
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The Colorado Supreme Court agreed to review whether an Arapahoe County judge, who is now a justice on the state’s highest court, correctly handled a potentially race-based dismissal of a Black juror, and whether jurors in an Adams County criminal trial should have received the definition of a key legal term – even though there is…
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Appeals court finds Arapahoe prosecutor misstated facts to eject Black juror, overturns convictions
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When asked to explain why he wanted to excuse a Black woman from the jury, an Arapahoe County prosecutor got offended, claimed he was being called racist, and offered inconsistent and factually untrue explanations for his actions. But while the prosecutor succeeded in convincing the trial judge to dismiss the juror, the state’s second-highest court…
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Appeals court offers competing interpretations of juror’s admission he ‘didn’t want diversity’
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A fractured Court of Appeals has upheld the kidnapping and sexual assault convictions of a man in Gilpin County, with sharp disagreement among the judges about the role racial bias played in his jury selection. Reginald Keith Clark, who is Black, is serving a 30-year sentence for bringing a white woman against her will from…
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Appeals court finds no racial discrimination despite excusal of three Black jurors in a row
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The state’s second-highest court has decided there was no intentional racial discrimination when an Arapahoe County prosecutor dismissed three Black people in a row from serving on a Black defendant’s jury. The appeal from Shawne Alexander Toney implicated the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark case of Batson v. Kentucky, which held that intentional racial discrimination in jury…
