by James A. Bacon
The most basic and essential of all government services is to administer justice and protect the citizenry. If government can’t do that, it fails at the most profound level.
So, now we read about a murder trial in Petersburg in which a young felon was accused of gunning down a 19-year-old Governor’s School graduate, Shaakira Ross. The trial came to a halt because too few Petersburg residents subpoenaed as potential jurors showed up!
As the Richmond Times-Dispatch observes in his coverage of the incident, it is “extremely rare” for a criminal trial to be postponed for a lack of subpoenaed witnesses. In this particular instance, the government did its job — it issued 60 subpoenas for potential jurors. But only 24 arrived. Of those, 18 were excused under a statutory provision that exempts college students, the disabled and the elderly over 70. That left only six potential jurors. Normally, a trial requires a pool of at least 26 to 30 because some get dismissed during the selection process for biases or conflicts of interest.
“If this sort of thing continues to happen — jurors not showing up — it could be disruptive of the criminal justice system,” said Commonwealths’s Attorney T. Leslie Lindsey.
Hopefully, the incident was a fluke. But don’t be surprised if it’s not. Peoples’ notions of citizenship are changing. Even middle-class citizens regard jury duty as a hassle and try to get out of it. In Petersburg, with its large population of poor, many of whom live unstable lives, drift from residence to residence, and regard the justice system with suspicion, I would bet that the failure to respond to jury subpoenas is a chronic problem.
As an aside… The criminal justice system didn’t fail Ross just once, but twice. Her accused killer, Leon Thomas Archer, 21, had pleaded guilty in 2013 to three counts of burglary, two counts of larceny of a firearm, and one count of grand larceny. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison with eight years suspended on each of the counts, and allowed to serve the terms concurrently, for a total of only two years served. The man should not have been on the street.
Archer’s defense is that the killing was accidental. By his own admission, he was preparing to break into a home that evening on Fort Rice Street when he was startled by some music playing behind him. Allegedly, he turned around, locked eyes with Shaakira Ross, who was sitting in her car, and shot her. The police removed five .45-caliber bullets from her body.
Next time you denounce “mass incarceration” and call releasing more felons from jail or prison, please remember the gamble the justice system will be taking. The victims almost always are other African-Americans, in this case Shaakira Ross, a young woman described as a good student with a big smile and upbeat attitude who was planning to go to nursing school.
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