EJI’s report reviews the history of jury discrimination and the limited success of efforts to address it through legal procedure over the past 40 years; the growing research on the positive impact of jury diversity when it comes to reducing bias and encouraging rigorous deliberation; and documented death penalty exonerations where cases were decided by nondiverse juries.

The report also examines scores of cases of individuals currently on Alabama’s death row and finds that exclusion of Black people from jury service is widespread and persists despite multiple findings of intentional racial discrimination in jury selection by courts.

​The data describes an Alabama death penalty system that relies on the decision-making of juries, but regularly fails to empanel juries that accurately represent the racial makeup of the community. Under this system, the voices and influences of Black people are excluded from the decision-making process when applying the state’s harshest penalty—while the proportion of Black people on Alabama’s death row is nearly double their representation in the state as a whole.

“Racial bias in jury selection remains a central feature of how the death penalty is obtained in many parts of the county,” said EJI Executive Director Bryan Stevenson. “Courts have grown less vigilant in responding to evidence of illegal racial discrimination and the reliability of verdicts are clearly being undermined.”

Jury discrimination remains widespread today. And though modern research endorses the value of diverse juries, they remain rare and elusive—even in death penalty cases where the risk of error is greatest.

Records documenting the racial makeup of the trial jury do not exist for all death penalty exonerations. But in dozens of known cases, innocent individuals were wrongly convicted and condemned to die based on verdicts reached by nondiverse juries. Black jurors were severely underrepresented in, and sometimes completely absent from, the decision-making process in those trials.

As of 2025, 23 states and the District of Columbia have abolished the death penalty. In four more states, governors have imposed holds on carrying out executions. Where the death penalty remains legal and active, increasing the diversity of juries is one tool that can increase reliability and help reduce the risk of wrongful conviction.

“Diverse juries are not a guarantee of verdict reliability or a shield against wrongful conviction,” said Jennifer Rae Taylor, EJI Senior Attorney and Writer and lead researcher on the report. “Jury makeup is just one factor, but it’s an impactful factor, and one we have the power to shape and control.”

In cases that turn on determinations of credibility and require weighing circumstantial evidence, wrongful conviction is a greater risk. That risk increases with nondiverse juries that are more likely to be biased in favor of conviction and less likely to forcefully hold the State to its burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.