New trial ordered because jury pool lacked blacks

GRAND RAPIDS (AP) -- A black man convicted of sexual assault deserves a new trial because the 42-member jury pool only had one black, the Michigan Court of Appeals said Wednesday. Kent County has long acknowledged that its computerized system years ago did not select jurors at random across all ZIP codes in the Grand Rapids area. It was corrected. "It is irrelevant that the problem ... does not appear to be intentional. A party need not show that the under-representation of a distinctive group came as a result of intentional discrimination," a three-judge panel said. Ramon Bryant's constitutional right to a jury picked from a cross-section of the community was violated, the court said. In 2002, Bryant was 16 when he was convicted of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and armed robbery. He was sentenced as an adult to 12 years to 35 years in prison. Bryant's lawyer, Arthur Rubiner, called the court's decision a "great victory." The Kent County prosecutor's office said the ruling contains errors, and it plans to ask the court to reconsider. If that fails, it will ask the Michigan Supreme Court to take the case. "It's frustrating that he gets a new trial when there is no reason to suspect the trial was unfair," said Timothy McMorrow, who handles appeals in the prosecutor's office. "An expert witness said that what happened in this case could have happened by random chance without a computer glitch," McMorrow said of the jury pool. McMorrow said he doubts there will be a "floodgate" of similar decisions granting new trials in cases that may be 10 years old. "They're long since finished," he said. "The image that we're going to have hundreds of reversals has not happened and I doubt it will." In 2008, a federal appeals court cited problems with the Kent County jury pool in ordering a new trial for a black man convicted of murder in 1993, long before the computer glitch. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, unanimously reversed that ruling in March. Published: Fri, Jun 25, 2010

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