In 2009, Shirin Bryant watched as an all-white jury acquitted a white police detective who shot and killed her 18-year-old brother, Jashon, in the north end of Hartford. The detective, Robert Lawlor, claimed he saw the Black teenager standing outside a car holding a gun, but no firearm was ever recovered from the scene.  The jury in Hartford deliberated for nearly two days following the trial but ultimately chose not to convict the police officer on manslaughter and assault charges, leading to questions about why no people of color were selected for the jury. Now, more than 15 years later, Bryant said the racial makeup of that jury still influences her views of Connecticut’s court system. “I have no trust in the judicial system,” she said. “I don’t feel like everyone gets a fair chance. My brother’s case alone has made me think differently. I feel the judicial system failed us.” It was that type of scenario that Connecticut’s judicial branch was trying to rectify when it overhauled its jury selection process in recent years. Since 2020, state officials have expanded who is eligible to serve on a jury. They changed the notices that are sent to potential jurors. And they increased the number of people who receive jury summons in Connecticut’s largest cities to help ensure the pool of available jurors more accurately reflects the state’s diverse population. Despite all of those reforms, however, new data collected by the state shows that, in several of Connecticut’s judicial districts, minority communities are still underrepresented. That data, which includes self-identified information for more than 44,000 people who reported for court service between November 2023 and May 2024, provides the first public glimpse into the racial makeup of jurors in the state’s history. And it suggests Connecticut may need to do even more to make sure the tens of thousands of people who report for jury service every year are truly representative of the communities they come from.  In the Stamford-Norwalk Judicial District, for instance, Black residents make up more than 12% of the jury-eligible population but less than 7% of the people who reported for jury service.  In the Windham Judicial District, the Hispanic community accounts for nearly 12% of the eligible population in that region but roughly 7% of prospective jurors.  And in the Hartford Judicial District, Hispanic residents make up more than 17% of the population but roughly 10% of the jury pool.  Those differences did not prevent Black and Hispanic residents from being selected to serve on most of the juries in those district courts. But state officials and law professors who study jury selection said such disparities can still erode public trust in the judicial system and make it more difficult to form racially diverse juries, which research has shown leads to more deliberation and a wider consideration of the evidence presented during a trial. Richard Robinson, who previously served as the first Black chief justice on Connecticut’s Supreme Court, said the perception of fairness in the judicial system is enormously important to the day-to-day functioning of the courts, and he said juries are at the very heart of that system.  “If people either feel the system is failing them or the system actually is failing them, you’ve got a problem and you need to address that,” said Robinson, who helped to initiate the review of the state’s jury selection process. Nina Chernoff, a law professor at the City University of New York who studies jury diversity, said public perception is even more important in situations where the majority of criminal defendants who are facing a trial are from the same racial or ethnic groups that are underrepresented within the pool of jurors. That is certainly the case in Connecticut, where more than 60% of the criminal cases that proceeded with jury selection between late 2023 and early 2024 involved either a Black or Hispanic defendant, according to state records.   “The way we maintain a democratic judicial system is to have members of the community weighing in,” Chernoff said. “So to the extent that a jury fails to reflect the community, it’s unable to serve its core purpose, which is to insert the community’s voice into the judicial process.”  Bryant, whose cousin was also seriously wounded in the shooting in Hartford, said that voice was definitely missing during the 2009 trial. Shirin Bryant Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror Because the jury that acquitted the police detective was composed of white suburbanites, Bryant said, it felt like her entire community in the North End of Hartford was on trial. Having people from the family’s neighborhood on the jury might have made a difference in how the case was perceived, she said. Jurors told news reporters following the trial that the racial composition of the jury did not influence the verdict. But that did not change Bryant’s opinion — or the opinion of others from Hartford’s North End. The acquittal provoked anger and mistrust of the justice system among many Hartford residents, according to news reports at the time. “Here we were in the inner city, and we have a jury that may all be from the suburbs,” Bryant, now 41, said. “Honestly, I feel like Black people as a whole don’t get the same equality. I feel my brother didn’t get a fair chance. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about my brother,” she said. “And I never forgot the trial. I never forgot walking in and seeing an all-white jury.” Rethinking the system Much has changed with the state’s jury selection process since that time. And in many ways, Connecticut now leads the country when it comes to confronting the issue of jury diversity.  That’s largely because of the Connecticut Supreme Court’s decision to appoint a task force in 2020 to rethink nearly every aspect of how the state summons, screens and selects jurors.  That task force, which was composed of judges, lawyers and law professors, was the result of a Black juror being dismissed during a murder trial in New London due to the views he expressed about police and the criminal justice system.  The defendant in that murder case, Evan Holmes, appealed to the Supreme Court demanding a new trial and arguing the dismissal of that juror was the result of racial discrimination.  The Supreme Court ultimately upheld the guilty verdict that was handed down in Holmes’ case, but Robinson and the other justices chose that moment to order a top-to-bottom review of the jury selection procedures in Connecticut. The formation of the task force coincided with a wider public reckoning with the nation’s criminal justice system following the murder of George Floyd, who died at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, and it led to significant changes over the past four years.  At the recommendation of the task force, Connecticut lawmakers voted to allow green card holders to serve on juries for the first time, and they reduced the number of years that people with felony convictions need to wait before they can be considered for jury duty. They also required court administrators to send additional jury notices to residents in cities like Hartford and Bridgeport, where many summons historically have gone unanswered or returned as undeliverable.  Robinson personally appeared in front of the legislature in 2021 to support those measures, and he told lawmakers the changes recommended by the task force were some of the most important pieces of legislation they would consider that year.  “We know how bad 2020 was for the pandemic. We know how bad it was for social unrest,” Robinson told lawmakers. “A lot of what’s going on is people have lost faith in our government institutions, and in particular, the thing that I worry about is the judicial branch.” “We have a constitutional right to have a jury of our peers,” Robinson added. “A lot of people aren’t feeling that is the case.” Richard A. Robinson testifying at his confirmation hearing for chief justice on April 23, 2018. Credit: Mark Pazniokas / CT Mirror The state’s judicial branch also asked legislators to consider increasing juror compensation in Connecticut to cut down on the number of people who ignore jury summons or are excused from jury service for financial reasons.  But lawmakers have repeatedly balked at that request due to the associated price tag, which could cost the state several million dollars per year.   Legislators did take the monumental step of making Connecticut one of the first states in the country to compile publicly available data on potential jurors, however. Diagnosing problems Connecticut has collected information about jurors for decades, but for much of the state’s history, that information was stored on paper records and was not disclosable to the public.  That changed in late 2023, after state law was revised and the judicial branch rolled out a new jury management system that enabled court officials to more effectively gather and store information on every prospective juror. The Connecticut Mirror attempted to obtain juror data going back several years, but the judicial branch said the paper forms on which it once recorded that demographic information were discarded by the state. The state’s new jury management system is now allowing the state to publicly assess whether it’s meeting its stated goal of forming juries that embody the state’s racially diverse population. And it puts Connecticut’s court system leagues ahead of most other states in the country — many of which do not collect or share demographic information on jurors. A study published earlier this year by researchers at the University of California Berkeley School of Law found that only 19 states collect data on the race and ethnicity of jurors. And many of those only share the data with judges and attorneys. Judge Kimberly Knox and Judge Peter Brown, who recently led a committee that analyzed Connecticut’s new juror data, said the state’s decision to gather and share that information is a remarkable step forward. And while the data highlighted several lingering issues with jury diversity, Knox and Brown said the judicial branch can use that information to help improve the system.  “We’ve kind of opened the door to other areas of inquiry,” Brown said. “I believe it is a jumping off point.”  Paula Hannford-Agor, who is the director of jury studies at the National Conference of State Courts, agreed. She said states that don’t collect or analyze information on jurors are not able to address problems or inequities in the system. “If you have concerns about the representativeness of your jury pool, you’re not going to be able to document whether that is your imagination or if it’s real,” Hannaford-Agor said. “That is why you want to be able to use data. You can use it diagnostically to identify the barriers that you can fix,” she added. Picking a jury The underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic jurors in some of the state’s courts is of vital importance to the judicial branch, which plans to review the jury data every year moving forward. But it may not matter that much from a legal perspective. Prior rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court have held that criminal defendants need to prove that a distinct group of jurors was “systematically excluded” in order for a jury pool to be deemed unconstitutional. And that is a very difficult bar to clear in most cases. Several defense attorneys in Connecticut said they have not seen the racial composition of juries in the state affecting the rights of their clients in court.  According to the state’s new data, there were at least 16 criminal trials between late 2023 and early 2024 in which no jurors of color were seated. That’s out of 117 criminal trials that went forward with jury selection over that time span. Meanwhile, in Torrington Superior Court, four out of the five criminal juries that were assembled were all white. In all of those cases, the defendants were also white. John Kaloidis, who previously served as the president of Connecticut Criminal Defense Lawyer Association, said he doesn’t automatically view race as the most important factor when selecting a jury, even if his client is from a minority community.  “The traditional school of thought, maybe 30 years ago, was you’re going to want a minority on the jury pool because they’re more likely to be sympathetic to another minority,” he said. “I think a lot of those old stereotypes that went along with picking a jury are out the window.” Kaloidis, who represents defendants charged with murder, armed robbery and sexual assault, said Connecticut’s laws provide attorneys with the tools that are necessary to protect their clients.  The state has what is known as individual voir dire. That means lawyers have the opportunity to question people individually to determine if they should be seated on a jury. That’s rather rare. Most states only allow attorneys and judges to question jurors in larger groups. Kaloidis said he believes the answers that jurors give during that voir dire are often far more important than the race they marked on their jury questionnaire. Those answers can delve into the juror’s beliefs, values and life experiences. “That is where it is on the defense lawyer to ask the appropriate questions,” he said.  Still, Kaloidis recognizes that the overall appearance of the jury pool can be intimidating for Black or Hispanic defendants who request a trial.  Some of Kaloidis’ past clients voiced apprehension as their jury selection began and a significant number of white jurors were paraded into the courtroom, he said.  “I have had clients that have said, “Look, I’m a little worried. I’m Hispanic, and the last five people have been white. And the next five people all sound like white guys and they all live in the suburbs,” Kaloidis said.  Outreach and income Some believe one of the biggest barriers to forming representative jury pools is people’s hesitancy with the criminal justice system. Scot X. Esdaile, president of Connecticut’s branch of the NAACP, said there still are sentiments within communities of color that serving on a jury is not in their best interest and could put a target on someone’s back if they help to acquit a criminal defendant. Other people, he said, worry they may be seen as a “sell out” if they convict someone from their own community. There is a general sense that it is better to stay away from the court system completely, Esdaile said. Esdaile, who served on Connecticut’s Jury Selection Task Force in 2020, is frustrated that more outreach hasn’t been done in the past four years to overcome those reservations and to increase the response rates among people of color in Connecticut.  During his time on the task force, Esdaile remembers discussing proposals such as using radio messaging in Black and Hispanic communities and passing out pamphlets to churches and civic organizations to increase jury participation. But he has not seen that outreach take place since then, he said.  “In order to educate, inform and engage communities, you have to get out into those communities and have conversations,” Esdaile said.  Law professors who study jury selection said people’s personal views on the judicial system are often cited in public as one of the main issues inhibiting jury diversity, but the bigger driver is often income, they said. Studies have shown that when researchers account for income levels, white individuals and people of color respond to jury summons at similar rates. The fact is, however, that people of color are more likely to fall into those lower income brackets. Elisabeth Semel, a law professor at the Berkeley School of Law who studied jury systems across the country, said the fear of losing out on a paycheck can prompt people with lower incomes to ignore a court summons when it arrives. It can also lead to judges dismissing more people from jury service due to financial hardship.  “One of the most important answers to the problem is increasing juror pay,” Semel said.  San Francisco’s courts recently undertook a pilot program that increased juror pay to $100 per day for anyone who earned less than 80% of the region’s median income, which showed significant results. It increased the likelihood of people with lower incomes participating in jury service and found those people were predominantly from minority communities. Jurors in Connecticut are compensated at a higher rate than many other parts of the country. The state requires Connecticut businesses to pay their employees during the first five days of jury service, and the state reimburses jurors up to $50 per day after that. But that level of pay can still be unworkable for lower-income households. Fifty dollars per day only equates to roughly $6.25 per hour. That is why the state’s judicial branch has spent the past several years asking lawmakers to raise juror up to the state’s minimum wage and to consider allowing jurors to expense the cost of family care and travel during their jury service. State prosecutors, defense attorneys and judicial officials all voiced support for those proposals, but lawmakers abandoned the request after legislative staff estimated the change could cost several million dollars per year.  Robinson, who recently returned to private practice after his 11-year stint on the Connecticut Supreme Court, said he views juror compensation as a major component to improving the state’s jury system. And he is hopeful that state lawmakers will eventually get behind the idea.  “This is not just a process that is going to take a year or a month,” Robinson said. “This is a process you have to continue looking at.”