In a landmark Supreme Court ruling requiring the disclosure of any jury deliberations with evidence of racial or ethnic bias, the majority opinion used the work of Yale Law School professor James Forman LAW ’92 to support the court’s argument.

The Supreme Court case concerned a 2010 sexual assault trial in Colorado in which a juror made a statement indicating that the defendant was guilty because of his race. The juror’s comments were confirmed by two other members of the jury whose sworn statements were submitted to the court after the trial. The majority opinion pointed to the Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury as well as the 14th Amendment right to equal protection under the law. Writing for the court majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy cited Forman’s 2004 article in the Yale Law Journal about jury bias in the 19th century to argue in favor of introducing evidence of racial bias in jury deliberations.

…

“Racism in our society doesn’t go away when a jury is empaneled. People bring their biases, explicit or implicit, with them,” Forman told the News, adding that the decision was essential and “overdue.”

…

In the passage quoted by Kennedy, Forman describes jury practices in the American South immediately following the Civil War, a climate in which all-white juries often penalized black defendants particularly harshly while showing greater leniency towards violence committed by white defendants, including Ku Klux Klan members.

…

In an interview with the News, Stanford law professor Jeffrey Fisher, also the lead lawyer in the Supreme Court case, said Forman’s work influenced his litigation.

“The fact that the court was so moved by it that it included it in the opinion is a testament to professor Forman’s work,” Fisher said.