Thread: Jury of their peers? For Hispanics, that's not very likely

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Jury of their peers? For Hispanics, that's not very likely

By Joe Johnson | joe.johnson@onlineathens.com | Story updated at 3:05 AM on Sunday, July 2, 2006
Roberta Fernandez thinks more people like herself should sit in the jury box.

The fifth-generation Mexican-American believes she could bring a unique perspective into the jury room as an immigrant's fate is being deliberated.

But when she was called for jury duty in December in the case of a Mexican accused of a gang-related drive-by shooting, Fernandez was turned away.

On the other hand, a white man who admitted he believes immigrants are disproportionately responsible for crime did get a seat on the jury that returned guilty verdicts that earned 26-year-old Miguel Hidalgo-Lopez a 30-year-prison sentence.

"I expected that to happen," Fernandez said about being dismissed from the jury. "I felt there was an attempt not to have Latino representation (on the jury). It puzzled me when the defendant's lawyer asked how would I know a certain kind of graffiti was gang-related, and I said there was a certain type. I thought it was interesting that I was being asked that because that would be part of the cultural nuances."

Although prosecutors presented evidence to convince the panel of six whites and six blacks that Hidalgo-Lopez was guilty of aggravated assault and violating the 1998 Georgia Street Gang Terrorism Prevention Act, juries may be the wild card in a court system that has otherwise adapted to accommodate the relatively new and rapidly growing migrant population.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees defendants trials by juries of their peers.

But if you're an immigrant in an area of Georgia where Spanish-speakers are relative newcomers, that's a near impossibility, according to Stephanie Bohon, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Georgia.

"The Georgia Supreme Court said you can't ignore the Latinos in your county, but you can ignore those who aren't jury-eligible," Bohon said. "That sounds logical, but that doesn't mean we do that with any other group. If the county is 26 percent black, we don't take into consideration if every black in the county is eligible for the jury. There's one standard Latinos and another standard for everyone else."

Fernandez, a former University of Georgia assistant professor of romance languages who now teaches at another area college, said if she had been in the jury room for the Hidalgo-Lopez trial, her understanding of Hispanic culture would have allowed for more honest deliberations.

"There are so many cultural nuances that are going to come up when a witness testifies that might not accurately be conveyed by the translator and (jurors) won't be able to interpret them," Fernandez said.

Part of Hidalgo-Lopez's defense was that he once belonged to Los Primos/Sur 13, but he quit, though he stayed friends with neighborhood gang members.

When a prosecutor asked Fernandez to define a gang during jury selection, she said it's a group of peers who bond together, not unlike the Knights of Columbus or college fraternities.

"It's an association of people who are marginalized by society," Fernandez elaborated in a later interview. "They associate because they are new to the country and have similar cultural backgrounds."

To become a "cognizable" group that must be represented in a jury pool, a minority must make up at least 5 percent of a community's population.

In making its jury pools, Athens-Clarke is still going by the 2000 census, which counts 6.3 percent of the county's 102,000 residents as Hispanic. That figure not only has more than doubled since then, the numbers are skewed, according to professor Doug Bachtel, a demographer at the University of Georgia.

"Latinos are not adequately represented in jury pools because many are under the radar," Bachtel said, explaining many migrants frequently change addresses and, if they are here legally, don't apply for citizenship.

"You may have a Spanish population of 10 to 15 percent in Athens-Clarke County, but if only 7 percent or so are documented, how can you put someone in the (jury) box you don't even know exists?" Clarke County Superior Court Judge Steve Jones asked.

Since 2001, the local jury commission has posted fliers at poultry plants, churches, bodegas and other places immigrants frequent to urge voter registration.

The response has been underwhelming.

A review of three recent jury pools showed two of the pools, each with 220 prospective jurors, had four people with Spanish surnames, or 1.8 percent. The third pool of 120 possible jurors had three people with Spanish surnames, or 2.5 percent.

From all three pools, only one person with a Spanish surname was seated as a juror.

"That does not make me happy," county Jury Commissioner Ruby Worthy said. "One reason I'm serving as a jury commissioner is, being black, I grew up during the civil rights movement, and remembering what my parents couldn't do, there's no way I would want to discriminate against anyone. My parents and grandparents would have loved to have served as jurors."

When the commission sent out bi-lingual letters inviting Hispanic residents for jury service, many came back with notes that said the people were not U.S. citizens, and were therefore ineligible to serve, Worthy said. Others came back as undeliverable because people had moved.

"I think we've gone beyond the call of duty" in trying to recruit more Hispanic jurors, she said. "I don't know of anything else we could have done."

Fernandez, the Mexican-American not selected for the gang member's trial, said unlike other people of Hispanic ancestry, Mexicans are less likely to apply for U.S. citizenship because many come to the United States to earn and save enough money to return to Mexico and buy property.

"I have a lot of friends from Latin America, but they're not voters because they've retained their nationalities," Fernandez said. "This is particularly true with Mexicans. Cubans who come here are probably not going back to Cuba, so they Americanize. Puerto Ricans are Americans by birth. But Mexicans are very proud to be Mexicans, and they're not necessarily coming here to become Americans, but to work, earn money and return home."

Hidalgo-Lopez's wife, Gabriella Martinez, said the outcome of her husband's trial might have been different had there been more jurors like Fernandez.

"The jury seemed like really nice, normal, very decent people, but maybe they could care less about a Mexican, you know?" Martinez said. "I mean, if they think for a moment that he's innocent, it still won't matter because he's a Mexican. Why would they care about his life and his family?

"There are all different types of Latinos because we all come from different cultures, and because of one person who might be a criminal all of us shouldn't be judged. He's a Mexican so he must've killed someone, did a drive-by, because that's the way Mexicans are."

The U.S. Constitution guarantees defendants trials by juries of their peers.

So what the story is saying is that as an American you are not a peer in this case. It is only by race that you are.

Originally Posted by AlturaCt

The U.S. Constitution guarantees defendants trials by juries of their peers.

So what the story is saying is that as an American you are not a peer in this case. It is only by race that you are.

It's also saying that a person may be permitted to break US law because of their cultural background. It just isn't fair to hold them to the same standards that US citizens are held to; in fact, it very well may be racist to do so.

"I have a lot of friends from Latin America, but they're not voters because they've retained their nationalities," Fernandez said. "This is particularly true with Mexicans. Cubans who come here are probably not going back to Cuba, so they Americanize. Puerto Ricans are Americans by birth. But Mexicans are very proud to be Mexicans, and they're not necessarily coming here to become Americans, but to work, earn money and return home."

This said it all for me.