An Alabama civil rights group has filed a lawsuit in federal court, claiming a district attorney barred blacks from serving on juries.

The Equal Justice Initiative based in Montgomery, Ala., filed the suit on behalf of five African-Americans who state courts found were illegally excluded from jury service because they are black.

The lawsuit asks the court to declare District Attorney Douglas Valeska’s conduct as discriminatory and unconstitutional and to monitor jury selection in the two south Alabama counties, where he prosecutes cases.

“When you exclude people from jury service on the basis of race, in the courthouse, the very institution designed to protect people from discrimination and violation of their rights, you undermine the integrity of the entire judicial system,” said Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and lead attorney for the plaintiffs.

Valeska, who has been a district attorney in the Twentieth Judicial Circuit in Alabama for more than 20 years, did not immediately return a call to his office Friday.

Discrimination is a systemic problem, said Kenneth Glasgow, founder and president of the Ordinary People Society, a human rights group, in Houston County.

“What we have to change here is a bad system, a corrupt system that causes disparities,” he said.

Between 2006 and 2010, the suit alleges that prosecutors in Dothan used peremptory strikes to exclude 82 percent of qualified black jurors in death penalty cases. As a result, juries in every death penalty case in Houston County have been all white or had only one black juror, when the circuit is nearly 25 percent black.

African-Americans were struck from the jury pool because they wore eyeglasses, were too young to serve at age 28, or were considered an “angry black man,” Stevenson said, referring to trail documents.Reasons for striking jurors were given at the bench and within earshot of potential jurors, humiliating and demeaning them, he said.

“The judges are also part of the problem,” Stevenson said. “They accept these reasons and the defendant is judged by an all-white jury.”

In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court lowered the burden of proof in discrimination in jury selection cases. Since then, the Equal Justice Initiative has witnessed 25 case reversals.

Of those 25 cases, seven involved cases prosecuted by Valeska.

The lawsuit was filed after the Equal Justice Initiative studied jury selection throughout the South and released “Illegal Racial Discrimination in Jury Selection: A Continuing Legacy.”

Data showed Houston County had been striking potential jurors and a disturbing rate, Stevenson said. He also noticed how potential jurors felt after they were excluded.

Alabama doesn’t limit the number of peremptory strikes an attorney can use to select a jury, which increases the opportunity to discriminate, Stevenson said.

The state also doesn’t have any laws specifically designed to curtail discrimination in jury selection or to discipline attorneys.

Some Alabama district attorneys who had cases reversed discontinued discriminatory practices, but a handful of counties have prosecutors who don’t seem to mind being reversed.
Valeska “has been reversed seven times, and people of color are still being excluded,” Stevenson said.