John Oliver spot-on in examination of jury duty

John Oliver continued his examination into the ways that racism is baked into the criminal justice system in this week’s main segment of Last Week Tonight, turning his attention to everyone’s favorite civic duty. While the right to a trial by a jury of your peers is enshrined in the Sixth Amendment, “the truth is that people of color are routinely excluded,” Oliver said, citing a study from the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies that says that “underrepresentation of the Latino and African-American populations is ubiquitous.” Lack of diversity on juries has far-ranging ramifications, not least because studies show that gaps in the conviction rates between white and Black defendants were eliminated when the jury pool included just one Black member.

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