Maga Miranda, a PhD candidate at UCLA, tweets, If you were defending or if you were prosecuting a jury trial, are there majors or other academic backgrounds you might want or not want on the jury?
I wonder what the case was? It is possible that there was something in either the defense or prosecution case involving ethnic studies somehow? They don't like jury members that are experts in certain fields sometimes because they fear that during jury deliberations they might have an extra large sway over the deliberations. As an example, I was on a jury where a security guard was almost prevented from getting on the jury because they apparently would routinely excuse law officers from the jury pools. They let him stay after a debate but it was a mistake. He was a horrible juror. At the start of deliberations he yelled at everyone that didn't vote guilty. Most just wanted to deliberate some on it before deciding. When silenced for that he paced back and forth in the jury room while the rest of us deliberated. IIRC we ended up finding the person guilty anyway.
The judge apparently assumed she was incapable of rendering an unbiased and logically thought out verdict and or could cause havoc in the jury room. She seems perhaps not to understand that it may not be a concern that she would advocate for social justice as much as a bias in many people's minds that equates Social Justice less with academics, equity, facts, and so on and more with inflammatory grievance rhetoric and emotion. While there are examples of some absolute nutty stuff out there, there are also people whose ability to be unbiased, and fact oriented can't be inferred from their particular area of study. That is gotten at through jury questioning. I could see a number of ways in which her area of study could be a helpful resource. In fact, I have known a Marxist Sociologist/Criminologist who was among the most unbiased, analytical, and factually oriented people you would want to meet. I never knew him to attempt to sway students from anything. He taught them to think logically. I would want him on any jury.
There are two kinds of jury strikes after the panel is assembled and all the usual excuses have been dealt with. These are strikes for cause where one side or the other demonstrates to the trial judge that a potential juror has expressed actual bias (very common) and peremptory strikes where each side may strike a set number of potential jurors without giving any reason. There are some limits to this privilege but that's the general idea. The point is, the trial judge virtually never excuses a potential juror on the judge's own motion. If the judge asked the potential juror any questions it's probably because the juror apparently hinted at some bias and the judge needed clarification. I would not have pursued any questioning about ethnic studies or social justice unless the woman made some pretty clear comment concerning her bias against (or in favor of) the police or something like that. Even then, she wouldn't have been excused unless one or the other party moved to excuse her.
Thank you Nosborne for the explanation. I've been on about a half dozen juries. The system seems to do their best to obscure what is really going on from the juror's point of view. For example, it seemed to me as a juror that the judge and lawyers did a whole lot of goofing off and wasting time. That is until I watched the OJ trial. Then I saw that a large portion of the work for the court was happening outside the view of the jury. Folks should not be upset when they are struck from a jury though. It can be for about any reason valid or invalid.
