Free Anatomy of Injustice by Raymond Bonner Page B

jury trial if he wanted one.
    The Constitution says nothing about how an “impartial” jury is to be selected. It is the judge’s responsibility to ensure an unbiased jury, and he is helped in getting one through a process known to lawyers as voir dire: The judge, prosecutor, and defense counsel question the men and women who have been summoned for jury duty. Many questions are routine: Do you know any of the police, the prosecutor, the defense counsel? Have you heard anything about the case that would prejudice you in reaching a verdict? How do you feel about capital punishment?
    Jones and Anderson also asked members of the jury pool about their religious affiliations and views. Did they go to church? If so, which one? How did they feel about the biblical axiom of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth? Or were they more New Testament, prone to turning the other cheek?
    Solicitor Jones was a member of the same Episcopal church as Dorothy Edwards. But he wasn’t looking for Episcopalians,because their church is opposed to the death penalty. Jones wanted Southern Baptists, members of the most conservative church in a conservative region, among the staunchest believers in capital punishment. Get more than four Southern Baptists on the jury, and once your client is convicted, he’s doomed to be sentenced to die, death penalty lawyers say. Whites tend to support the death penalty more than blacks, men more than women, married persons more than singles, wealthy people more than poor people, suburbanites more than urbanites. And individuals who believe in capital punishment are generally more inclined to convict, to believe the police and the prosecutor.
    Frances Carolyn Mann was the first member of the panel to be questioned. She fit the profile of a pro-prosecution juror: ninth-grade education; owned several guns—a stainless steel .357 Magnum, an Ithaca riot gun, a .22 Magnum, and a .25 automatic; her current husband ran the Central Detective and Security Agency.
    “Mrs. Mann, I don’t want to embarrass you, but isn’t it a fact that your husband has a pending indictment against him in this court?” Anderson asked.
    “Yes, sir, he does.”
    Anderson asked Judge Burnett to disqualify her. “She doesn’t want to have him on her husband, I can tell you that,” Anderson said, referring to Jones. Burnett disagreed. She could sit.
    The law gives the prosecution and defense preemptory challenges, the right to dismiss a potential juror without giving any reason. In South Carolina at the time, Anderson had ten; he exercised his first to dismiss Mrs. Mann. He used his second and third against the next two on the panel.
    Then came Elizabeth Pinson, fifty-five years old.
    Have you formed an opinion about this case? Judge Burnett asked.
    Just about everyone had, she said. It was a revealing observation about the press coverage of the murder and the chances of Elmore getting a fair trial. More candor and insight followed. Do you feel like you could give Edward Lee Elmore a fair and impartial trial? Beasley asked. “I feel that I have an obligationto the people that I know real well who are terrified because of this, and I think if I were on the jury, they would expect me to feel for all of them who were close to her and who saw the situation and who—and whose lives did change because of this.”
    Did she believe in an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth? Beasley asked.
    “I’m not a vindictive person, but I still—I feel some obligation to the little old ladies of the community.”
    Beasley argued to Judge Burnett that given these views, Mrs. Pinson could hardly be a fair and impartial juror, and asked that she be disqualified. Burnett declined to do so. Beasley exercised another preemptory challenge.
    The defense had only one left when Joseph Chalmers was called. He looked like a good juror for the defense: Methodist and one of the most educated members of the jury pool, with a BS in industrial engineering from Clemson,