Day 5: Black defendant, white victim and the role of race in the verdict

Delbert McFadden was one of 12 jurors who decided that Jamar Huggins was guilty of a 2012 home invasion in Conway.

The verdict meant the prosecution had convinced the jury Huggins was the man who put a gun in the faces of a woman and her 12-year-old daughter while demanding the “[expletive] money” over an uncompensated drug buy.

None of the other jurors could be reached or returned messages asking for comment.

The jury did not take the testimony of the prosecution’s star witness seriously because “we didn’t know if she was drunk or high that day,” McFadden said.

He was referring to DeAungela “Shante” Montgomery, the only person — or piece of evidence — linking Huggins to the case. Even Judge Benjamin Culbertson, who oversaw the trial, said it was clear the prosecution was relying upon her to point to Huggins from the stand.

Instead, Montgomery testified that Huggins was not involved and that her initial statement was a lie concocted to avoid having to say who was really involved.

Fifteenth Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson said he’s had other cases during which witnesses have recanted. In drug cases, the prosecution is often stuck with less-than-perfect witnesses and it’s not always clear when they are honestly recanting — righting an initial wrong — or doing so out of fear or another reason, he said.

It happened in an unrelated case seven months after Huggins was convicted. William Christopher Suggs was facing charges for a Leonard Avenue home invasion. His co-defendants told the jury Suggs was not involved — even though the prosecution had expected them to say he was.

Suggs was found not guilty.

In the Huggins case, no one was presented during the trial to verify any portion of the statement in which Montgomery named him.

How did McFadden and 11 other jurors come to believe the prosecution had proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt?

McFadden did not respond to follow-up queries.

According to the trial transcript, Culbertson speculated the jury must have believed Montgomery’s initial statement and disbelieved her testimony.

That would mean the jury believed Montgomery was more trustworthy while being interrogated — when she was sitting in J. Reuben Long Detention Center trying not to go to prison for several decades — than she was while under oath, knowing lying could potentially increase a 10-year-sentence she was already serving.

That would mean jurors were doing precisely what Culbertson said they could, believe all or none of a witness’s statements or testimony.

According to legal experts, direct evidence, like a drug buy caught on video, isn’t necessarily more important than indirect evidence. It’s up to the jury to decide what passes the “reasonable” test.

It means that the American criminal justice system believes it was perfectly reasonable to send Huggins to prison for 15 years based solely on the word of a crack-addicted woman who admitted lying to protect herself, and a lead investigator who admitted he lied — telling a suspect he had information he knew to be false to extract a confession — to solve a crime.

There was no DNA, no fingerprints, no known contact between Huggins and the alleged target, Adrian “Drake” Moore. The victims could not identify the two men who, along with Montgomery, invaded their home five days before Christmas.

It means it was OK for the lead detective and the prosecutor to tell the jury there was no evidence of Montgomery’s crack addiction — even though there was.

It means the system says it is perfectly reasonable to find a man guilty based upon a statement the jury did not even get to fully examine. They were not told Montgomery initially denied everything and that her story included multiple claims that contradict those made by the man police said was the real target of the home invasion.

The verdict is being appealed. Such a decision can take a year or more. Most are denied.

The first appeal is whether Culbertson erred in sending the case to the jury at all, particularly after the star witness recanted on the stand. The judge could have issued a directed verdict. John Long, Huggins’ lawyer, argued Culbertson should have; the judge denied the motion while conceding it was “a close call.”

If that appeal fails, another could be filed. Here’s the rub with a second appeal though: Because Huggins has already been found guilty, he would have to prove his innocence — based on evidence not already presented — if he wants to be freed, precisely the opposite of the innocence until proven guilty standard he technically had during the first trial.

Hundreds of men have been freed over the past couple of decades after new evidence was discovered or key witnesses recanted. In this case, the key witness has already recanted.

There was another factor at play that many lawyers said they hardly ever deal with directly — race — despite a growing body of evidence that it is a major factor in jury decision-making, even if unintentionally.

Race began playing a role in the Huggins trial from the beginning.

A young black woman walked up to Culbertson and begged out of the jury pool.

There’s “too much street in this case,” she told the judge while visibly shaking.

Culbertson granted her request, allowing one of only a few potential black jurors to leave a jury pool.

That decision, coupled with the philosophy of the Fifteenth Circuit Solicitor’s Office to put together a jury based in part on race, all but guaranteed the jury would be homogeneous.

“I don’t think race plays as much of a factor in it; I think it’s age,” the solicitor said. “We are all a product of what we grew up in or around.”

Multiple studies, including one by the Equal Justice Initiative that examined juror selection in 8 Southern states, including South Carolina, and a recent examination of Louisiana’s Caddo Parsh have shown that most jury pools are overwhelmingly white, and that the relatively few potential black jurors are dismissed at a much higher percentage than potential white jurors. The disparate treatment of blacks throughout the justice system makes them less likely to be eligible to vote, which affects their eligibility to be considered for a jury.

A growing body of research also shows that the racial makeup of a jury can have an impact on the verdict, even though the Supreme Court in 1986 outlawed the practice of striking potential jurors based on race, a practice critics say still occurs because it is easy for prosecutors to give non-race based reasons.

Richardson freely admits that he “would not sit a black male that looks [Huggins’] age” but would allow an older black man to sit on the jury because “he might be harder on the young black guy.” He makes similar decisions involving white defendants, he said.

Researchers have found that race does play a role.

“A 2004 study by the Capital Jury Project found that in cases with a black defendant and a white victim, having one or more black male jurors drastically lowered the chances of a death sentence,” a New Yorker analysis found.

Huggins is black and the Ecklers white; the jury consisted of 11 white people and one black man.

A Duke University study found that black defendants were “significantly more likely than whites to be convicted of at least one crime when there were no potential black jurors in the jury pool.”

“These findings imply that the application of justice is highly uneven and raise obvious concerns about the fairness of trials in jurisdictions with a small proportion of blacks in the jury pool,” the authors wrote.

There’s no way to know with certainty how race will affect a particular case.

Had McFadden, or any other juror, been replaced by the alternate juror, Mark Brooks, Huggins would likely would be free today.

“I was surprised by the verdict,” Brooks said. “I just didn’t find that the witness was credible. I thought there was a lack of evidence. I think [Huggins] may do stuff, but nothing proved he did that.”

McFadden, who is black, joined 11 white jurors to convict Huggins.

Brooks, who said he would have voted not guilty if he had the chance, is white.

This story was originally published September 16, 2015 at 4:53 PM with the headline "Day 5: Black defendant, white victim and the role of race in the verdict."