Two particularly salient points from Duke’s summary of the study:
— In cases with no blacks in the jury pool, blacks were convicted 81 percent of the time, and whites were convicted 66 percent of the time. The estimated difference in conviction rates rises to 16 percent when the authors controlled for the age and gender of the jury and the year and county in which the trial took place.
— When the jury pool included at least one black person, the conviction rates were nearly identical: 71 percent for black defendants, 73 percent for whites.
Eliminating jurors on the basis of race is of course illegal, but based on this data, the racial makeup of a jury can have a significant impact on whether or not a black defendant is convicted.
SOURCE: Study: All-White Juries More Likely To Convict Black Defendants | Mother Jones.