Manhattan federal prosecutors wrongly relied on white grand juries in Westchester, attorneys argue
Manhattan federal prosecutors used disproportionately white grand juries in Westchester to indict people for crimes that normally would be presented to a panel of city residents, according to an analysis challenging cases filed during the coronavirus pandemic.
COVID-19 has disrupted the wheels of justice throughout the court system. State criminal trials in the city are suspended. A handful of federal trials are proceeding under strict coronavirus measures in which witnesses speak from inside Plexiglas cubicles equipped with air filters.
The Federal Defenders of New York write in recent filings in Manhattan Federal Court that the secretive grand jury process, in which prosecutors ask a panel of jurors to decide if an indictment should be filed, was also altered by the pandemic.
In at least seven cases prosecutors used grand juries in White Plains to issue indictments that would typically be considered by a panel in lower Manhattan. The Southern District of New York covers Manhattan, the Bronx, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange, Dutchess and Sullivan counties.
After digging into the change in protocol, the Federal Defenders — public defenders in the federal system — found that Black and Hispanic people are significantly underrepresented in White Plains grand juries.
Black people are nearly 21% of the eligible juror population in Manhattan, but only 8.7% of the White Plains eligible population — a disparity of 12%. Latinos are 28% of the eligible juror population in Manhattan, but only 10% in White Plains. The list of eligible jurors in White Plains further under-represents Black and Hispanic people by excluding people who changed addresses in the last four years, the analysis found.
“Over the summer we learned that Manhattan federal prosecutors were using grand juries that excluded residents from the two most diverse counties in the district — Bronx and New York. Many of our clients come from these communities, and we filed motions to dismiss the indictments. After a bit of digging, we discovered that the problem runs deeper still: the SDNY systematically fails to summon representative juries. Our motions propose concrete steps that the court can take to make sure that Black and Latinx people are represented as fact-finders, not just defendants,” Federal Defender Annalisa Miron said.
The Federal Defenders have challenged the racial makeup of grand juries that indicted accused CIA leaker Josh Schulte, alleged Army traitor Ethan Melzer and an undocumented immigrant, Souleymane Balde, charged with illegal gun possession in the Bronx.
The Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office declined to comment on why prosecutors’ protocol had changed.
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