Skip to main content

Court Defines Underrepresentation In Jury Pool

1979

In Duren v. Missouri, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that in order to show that a jury pool is not a fair cross section of the community because one or more groups has been excluded, a defendant must show that (1) the excluded group can be easily identified in the community; (2) the number of group members in the jury pool is unreasonably low given the number of that group’s members in the community; and (3) the low number of group members is the result of exclusion, not accident. In this case, the Court finds that the Sixth Amendment was violated because even though women made up more than 50 percent of the general population, they represented only 15 percent of the jury pool.