Calling out some unconscious bias in the SF Superior Court

I just concluded serving on a jury in SF Superior Court on a criminal charge.  The most important thing to share is that it was a valuable experience and I came away with a high opinion of the behavior and integrity of the judge, the assistant district attorney, the City's defense attorneys, and our jury.  I think we all did a good job.

However, during jury selection, I started to notice a pattern that concerned me.   Asian potential jurors were being asked questions that seemed to me to be missing the point of what they were trying to say.   Soon after I suspected it was a pattern about Asians, the last four potential jurors were dismissed; all of them Asian.   I decided to approach the judge, and was asked to speak to the courtroom on the record after all the jurors had left.

At that point I explained my observation and gave three examples.  I also made it clear that I do not believe this pattern would have any effect on the justice in this case.  I just felt that after hearing about the importance of surfacing unconscious bias for two days that the court itself was exhibiting some, and it’s my responsibility to say something once I saw something.  I am pleased to say that the judge expressed appreciation that I would make this statement and that he and the lawyers all took my observations to heart, although of course I don’t know how valid they found them.  They asked if it would bias me against any of them (answer:  no, they all did it) and if it would bias me in the case (also no).

After thinking about it afterwards, I realized that there is a common thread to the observations, and I’ve never really thought about this as an Asian perspective, but maybe it is. 

1.       1)  We like to follow the rules.  Most of ‘em weren’t made to be broken.

2.       2)  We don’t like to say we’re absolutely 100% sure about anything.

Several times people were asked if they were certain that they could not be affected by personal bias regarding the credibility of policemen, the gender of the defendant, the presumed guilt of an arrested person, the certainty of circumstantial evidence, or willingness to be swayed by the opinion of an admired fellow juror.   It is my inference that following the repetitive focus on being unbiased, they were uncomfortable with giving the impression of too much confidence.  So while many of us took your questioning to mean, “Do you think it’s realistic that any of your biases (and we all have some) would affect your interpretation of the evidence?” and were comfortable saying no, I suspect their interpretation was “Are you absolutely sure that this particular bias can never affect your opinion no matter what?” and said, “No.  How can I be absolutely sure?”   Following that admission of the tiniest doubt, they became fish in a pond.

I recognize that the lawyers have a right to issue peremptory dismissals for whatever reason they want, but I think both they and the judge fell into this trap.  I’m willing to surmise that if you review the list of all potential jurors that were dismissed by any party, you’ll find that a majority, if not strong majority of them were Asian.

As I said, I don’t think this affects the worthiness of the jury selected in this case.  I have no reason to believe that Asians have a different view about what is just.   But I feel it is my obligation to warn you about this bias in the event a future case would ever be affected.