One of the largest problems plaguing the American judicial system has been ensuring that juries in civil and criminal trials are truly representative of the communities in which they serve. Historically, minorities have been disproportionately excluded from jury service. This is a result of many forces such as a low response rate to jury summonses by minorities, a high percentage that claim hardships, a feeling by lawyers that minorities will be bias toward their own ethnic group, and the statistical fact that minorities tend to be poorer; thus, they can not afford to take off of work to serve on a jury. Because of their vast under representation minorities can never get a jury of their "peers". This does not necessarily imply that they can not get a fair trial in America, but simply that the "equal" justice system that the writers of the constitution laid out is not working the way it was designed.

African Americans make up only 12% of the population in the United States, yet they account for 42% of all the prisoners on death row. When an African American person kills a Caucasian the rate of being sentenced to death is five times higher than if a Caucas

ian kills a Caucasian (Adams, 1998). Is this fact because the African American offenders are more violent? Or is it just that white jurors do not identify with African

American people as well as they do Caucasians so they find it easier to give harsher punishments? This startling statistic is primarily because of the under representation of minority groups on juries in America. If defendants had a group of jurors that were more representative of their community in which they lived, then the death row statistics might look a little different.

Minority groups in this nation are clearly under represented on juries. It is impossible to ensure proportional representation by gender, sexual orientation, handicap, religion, nationality, wealth, age and race because of the small size of juries (twelve people), however, the experiences of members of different racial and ethnic groups tend to differ in ways that may affect their perceptions of some issues.

Some common words found in the essay are:
African Americans, United Adams, America INTRODUCTION, Unfair Representation, CONCLUSION Minority, Justice Marshall, African American, Caucasians Frequently, african american, jury service, Caucasian Adams, unfair representation, excluded jury service, adams 1998, excluded jury, chavez 1995, found minority, respond summonses, bias own ethnic, prospective jurors, jury summonses,
Approximate Word count = 959
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)