Are juries racially biased? Of course they are. Economists Shamena Anwar of Carnegie Mellon, Patrick Bayer of Duke, and Randi Hjalmarsson of Queen Mary University
studied Florida jury verdicts from 2000-2010; they found that "(i) juries formed from all-white jury pools convict black defendants significantly (16 percentage points) more often than white defendants and (ii) this gap in conviction rates is entirely eliminated when the jury pool includes at least one black member." However, the non-jury "professional" elements of the American justice system may be even more racially biased. Last year
John Roman of the Urban Institute crunched the data on "justifiable homicide" determinations broken down by race and by whether or not the state was a stand-your-ground state. These are determinations made by police or prosecutors as to whether a homicide was justifiable, before the case ever reaches a jury trial. He found that white-on-black killings were more than twice as likely to be found "justified" as white-on-white killings, and more than three times as likely in stand-your-ground states. And of course it was the trained law enforcement professionals in the police force, not any jury, that initially decided George Zimmerman should not even be arrested for the killing.