Mother Jones says “Study: All-White Juries More Likely To Convict Black Defendants” – citing researchers from Duke University:
The bad news is that, according to the study, which looked at 700 cases between 2000 and 2010, all-white juries are significantly more likely to convict black defendants than white ones. The good news is that a single black juror can alter that dynamic.
In cases with no blacks in the jury pool, blacks were convicted 81 percent of the time, and whites were convicted 66 percent of the time. The estimated difference in conviction rates rises to 16 percent when the authors controlled for the age and gender of the jury and the year and county in which the trial took place. When the jury pool included at least one black person, the conviction rates were nearly identical: 71 percent for black defendants, 73 percent for whites.
Remember, correlation doesn’t imply causation, but that is some pretty awful correlation. Read the full study at Duke’s web site.