Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 10, 1993 TAG: 9302100244
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Laurence Hammack Staff Writer
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
RACIAL MAKEUP OF JURY EXPLAINED
A federal prosecutor in Roanoke was called to the witness stand during a drug trial Tuesday to explain why he had just excluded the only black male from a panel of prospective jurors.After hearing Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Mott's explanation, Judge James Turk ruled that Mott made a proper decision in which race was not a factor. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that attorneys may not exclude potential jurors in criminal trials solely on the basis of race.
Roger Trenton Davis first raised concerns that a panel of 35 prospective jurors - selected from throughout Western Virginia to hear his cocaine distribution charge - only three were black.
"Are you really my peers?" he asked the panel. But because the jurors were randomly selected by computer, Turk ruled there was no evidence that blacks had been systematically excluded.
Less than an hour later, the issue resurfaced when the panel was narrowed to a jury of 12.
After defense attorney David Damico objected to Mott's striking the only black male from the panel, Turk took the unusual step of calling the prosecutor to the witness stand.
Mott said he struck the potential juror because, as a single man with no children and perhaps temporary residency in Virginia, he lacked the community ties that prosecutors look for in jurors.
"It was not motivated by race at all," Mott testified. "I knew it was going to cause problems when I struck him, but I wasn't prepared to compromise my principles."
The other two blacks on the panel, both women, were selected to serve on a jury that will hear, as part of Davis' insanity plea, his beliefs that drug prosecutions amount to genocide of the black race.