*The Aaron Hernandez double-murder trial is in its second day of jury deliberation, with the judge and defense team at odds over the selection of a white person as the foreperson of a minority-filled jury.
According to Yahoo Sports, 15 potential jurors were selected with the goal of choosing 12 to ultimately decide whether the former NFL star murdered Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado in a 2012 Boston drive-by shooting.
Via Yahoo Sports:
The defense takes issue with Suffolk County Judge Jeffrey Locke selecting what it called “a white woman” as the foreperson on two counts:
1. The diverse makeup of the jury.
2. And the fact the selection occurred before the three alternates were chosen via lottery. This assured a white woman was on the jury and thus decreased the odds of an additional person of color.
By picking the white woman first, that left 14 jurors for 11 spots via blind draw. The final makeup of the jury is, by the estimation of the court, two white women, two white men, two black women, one black man, three Hispanic women, one Hispanic man and one Asian man.
The defense has deemed the jury makeup as acceptable and “overwhelmingly ethnic and minority” – essentially eight of the 12 jurors. Hernandez is of Puerto Rican and Italian descent. The victims in this case, de Abreu and Furtado, were immigrants from Cape Verde, an island nation off the coast of Western Africa. Hernandez is also accused of shooting a third Cape Vedean, as well as a witness, Alexander Bradley, who identified himself as African-American on the stand.
Last Thursday the defense first filed the objection, claiming Locke had created “extraordinary troubling racial overtones that implicate the defendant’s due process rights.” By choosing a white woman first, defense attorney Ronald Sullivan argued, it not only lowered the odds that people of color would make the jury but conveyed a sense of unfairness that a group that is predominantly of color would have a white foreperson.
Locke, who is white, responded to the issue Monday morning in an intense back and forth with Sullivan, who is black.
“Accusing any court of being racist is not only offensive to the individual judge but extraordinarily offensive to the tribunal and the integrity of the tribunal,” Locke argued.
Sullivan didn’t back down.
“We find it offensive, frankly,” said Sullivan, who is also a Harvard law professor. “We find it offensive that with this jury, predominantly filled with people of color, that these people can’t self-govern, they can not self-regulate. That this court, immunized by effect one white juror and makes that juror the leader of the group. We find that offensive.”
Locke said that excluding a white woman because she is a white woman would have been unfair along racial grounds.
“It seems to me it is implicit in that claim that a white woman should have been excluded from that selection based on gender and color,” Locke said. “… Frankly, I find it astounding you would make that claim.”
Sullivan continued his argument, noting that at the beginning of the trial Locke told the jurors they would have equal opportunity to both serve and be named foreperson. The three alternates consist, in the court’s estimation, of two whites and a Hispanic.
“Your Honor should have done what you said and given every person of color the same opportunity to serve on this jury as that white person,” Sullivan said. “You told the jury one thing and did the other.”
Locke said it is his longstanding practice to select a foreperson before the alternates are picked. It appears to be within the standard of trial judges in Massachusetts. He said he makes his selection based on what he observes to be the level of concentration displayed by the juror during the trial.
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