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Sunday, August 07, 2011
Ind. Courts - "Lake Judge Stefaniak said he would not tolerate lawyers using race as an excuse to exclude whites from a jury"
That is a quote from a long story today in the NWI Times, reported by Bill Dolan, and headlined "Judge vows racial justice for murder defendant and prosecutors." The story begins:
CROWN POINT | Lake County's race history could be in the docket next month along with a Gary man going on trial for death penalty murder.Here is a link to the 2009 Indiana Supreme Court decision in Darryl Jeter v. State, which is referenced in the full story.Lake Criminal Court Judge Thomas Stefaniak Jr., lawyers for Kevin Isom and the prosecutor's office have spent more than four months combing through a randomly selected list of 500 county residents for an impartial jury.
Isom is pleading not guilty to charges he fatally shot his wife of 12 years, Cassandra Isom, 40, and her two children, Michael Moore, 16, and Ci'Andria Cole, 13, on Aug. 6, 2007, at the family's Lakeshore Dunes apartment in Gary's Miller section.
The prosecutor will seek the death penalty when the trial begins Sept. 26.
Stefaniak acknowledged this week from the bench during a pretrial hearing jury selection will be difficult given the life-or-death stakes involved, and that Isom is a black man in a county where a debate remains whether he can get a fair verdict and sentence from the majority of county white residents.
To prove his zeal to provide a jury pool with a fair cross-section of the county's minority population, Stefaniak has been taking what he calls unprecedented steps.
He ordered two black women in that group of 500 who hadn't completed juror questionnaires into his courtroom Thursday to explain why. He ordered the arrest of one of them who didn't appear at Thursday's hearing but who showed up. Both filled out their questionnaires.
The judge further ordered his staff to investigate the demographics of an additional 44 no-shows.
"This is above and beyond the call of duty, but the more people who fill out jury qualification forms from this random pool gives the defendant the greatest chance of having a jury of his peers and to take prospective appeal issues off the table," Stefaniak said.
Stefaniak said he would not tolerate lawyers using race as an excuse to exclude whites from a jury.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 7, 2011 04:12 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts