Before a high-profile federal trial began in Baltimore last month, lawyers for the three black defendants filed a motion claiming that the prosecution deliberately - and illegally - dismissed black jury candidates to pack the panel with whites.
"They want a jury that may be sympathetic to the death sentence," defense attorney Archangelo Tuminelli said.
But the judge ultimately ruled that the allegation was wrong. And, it turns out, the stereotype might be, too.
While many lawyers have long relied on stereotypes to figure out how potential jurors might lean, those characterizations are increasingly turned on their heads, trial consultants said.
Women can be harder on rape victims who put themselves in risky situations. Business people could be bitter toward companies because of economic cutbacks. And minorities, who are supposed to favor the defense because they distrust law enforcement, often side with prosecutors, while whites sometimes favor black defendants, even if it's just out of a fear they'll be labeled racist if they do otherwise.
In the Baltimore case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kwame Manley, who's black, told the judge during a hearing that he had hoped one African-American alternate would make the jury because the man was a "clean-cut," Wall Street Journal reader, who was more likely to identify with the government than admitted drug dealers.
Last week, that federal jury, made up of 10 whites and two blacks, convicted the defendants of running a drug conspiracy known as "Special" and murdering witnesses. This week, members will consider whether two of the men - Melvin Gilbert, 34, and James Dinkins, 37 - should be sentenced to death.
There's not much anyone can tell about how jurors will vote from looking at them, experts said.
A 2004 paper published in the journal of the American Psychology-Law Society concluded that black jurors only become more receptive to mitigating factors underlying criminal behavior when the defendant is a black person facing the death penalty for killing a white one.
"The death penalty is a really complex issue, because it's not just simply are you for or against," said Jeffrey Frederick, a psychologist and trial consultant who's written a book on jury selection. "It's a complex set of attitudes and experiences that people bring to bear."
