Louisiana Voice

Even as the media bemoans the harsh reality that efforts to reinstitute Jim Crow in places like Texas, Florida, Georgia, and elsewhere are succeeding, the harsher reality is the unofficial exclusion of blacks never left the nation’s court systems as it pertains to jury selection.

In fact, the courts have taken the concept up a notch or two by quietly excluding anyone, black, brown, yellow or poor white, who just didn’t fit into the establishment’s perception of how justice should be administered.

The revelation by LouisianaVoice this week of the manner in which the 26^th Judicial District, comprised of the parishes of Bossier and Webster, has for years manipulated the jury selection process in favor of the prosecution may encompass more than just a single judicial district in Louisiana.

A 107-page REPORT by the Equal Justice Initiative titled Race and the Jury: Illegal Discrimination in Jury Selection addresses the issue only in terms of race, but LouisianaVoice has found what appears to be a trend of eliminating undesirable potential jury members before they were ever even aware their names had been drawn.

Briefly, that report says people of color are excluded from juries “at every step of the jury selection process:

• When the court system creates lists of potential jurors;
• When potential jurors are notified to come to court;
• When judges decide which potential jurors are qualified to serve, and finally,
• When prosecutors use peremptory strikes to remove potential jurors.

The practice does not appear to be limited to racial issues as the elderly were “waived” from jury duty without ever asking to be excused by someone simply altering or forging their jury questionnaires.

Attorneys normally have a predetermined number of peremptory challenges, whereby a potential juror may be STRUCK, or dismissed, without cause. There is no limit to challenges for cause, however.

But it is with the peremptory challenges that prosecutors have the advantage. By weeding through the venire in advance, potential jurors can be eliminated before the defense even knows who is on the list and that is what appears to have been going on in the 26^th JDC, and most likely elsewhere, for many years now and likely involves the cooperation of officials from the judiciary, prosecutors and offices of the clerks of court.

And the way it’s done doesn’t appear to be according to Hoyle, according to a report by a Texas handwriting expert.

Peggy Walla of LPR Investigations of Columbus, Texas, has 41 years’ experience in handwriting identification skills, including 12 years in forensic document examination with LPR. She has testified in numerous cases involving documents and signatures, revealing alterations or deletions.

She was retained by Gary Holder, father of Chris Holder who was convicted of second-degree murder in 2014 by a split-jury verdict. (See previous LouisianaVoice stories HERE and HERE.)

Walla examined hundreds of documents, including questionnaires sent to each potential juror over a seven-year period and determined that the answers given to at least 39 of those were written by “possibly 3-4 authors.”

She said she examined the documents for evidence of forgery, alterations, additions, or deletions and attempted to identify or eliminate persons as sources of handwriting. She factored in dozens of writing characteristics, including alignment, positioning, capitalization, cross strokes, dots, directions of strokes, patterns of pressure emphasis, size, skill, slant, slope, spacing, initial strokes, connecting and terminal strokes, tremor, hesitation of writing instrument, patching, retouching, letter groupings, unnatural tremor, distorted or natural writing and use of white-out, to name only a few of the variables.

“Writers who do not wish to be identified by their handwriting resort to disguised writing,” she wrote, adding “Originality in disguise is rare.”

“Change of slant is the most frequently used method of creating disguised writing. People who disguise their handwriting do not realize that their writing habits are so ingrained that they cannot alter them sufficiently to avoid detection.”

Accordingly, she had exhibits of page after page of questionnaires, waivers, and other documents which appeared to have been written by no more than two or three persons instead of the hundreds of persons supposedly sent notifications to. That would indicate that someone in the court system had gone through the lists of potential jurors and eliminated those who were not favorable to the prosecution – all without the knowledge or consent of those potential jurors.

As a result, the required 250 venire of petit jurors consistently fell far short of that number, capping out at 141 in one case.

Walla’s examination of documents revealed no fewer than 227 which were altered and/or forged, she said.

Her full report is included in an appeal filed with the Second Circuit Court of Appeal which is currently pending. And while it’s still uncertain as to who ordered that the documents be altered or forged, it would appear that more than one person was involved.

Just how many judicial districts in Louisiana are involved in similar activity cannot be known without extensive district by district audits.

TOMORROW: Holder’s appeal is filed by a heavy hitter in the legal community.