Legal Question in Criminal Law in Delaware

Re: Jury Selection & Race

Whether the defendant must be present is a question that might have different answers in different states. I'll defer to a Delaware lawyer on that point.

As long as the jury pool is selected fairly and neither the lawyers nor the court discriminate against individual potential jurors, then it is both legal and fair to seat the resulting jury regardless of its racial mix. If the jurors all happen to be of the same race, then that's just the way it is. It would be both offensive and illegal for the court to remove an otherwise qualified juror because of her race and then select her replacement based upon his race.

Juries need not resemble the local population as a whole, so long as the jury pool represents that population and the individual jurors are selected from that pool fairly. It would be nearly impossible to make sure each jury had a particular percentage of whites, blacks, Asians, etc., just as it would to ensure a given mix of Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhits, Hindus, atheists, Shintos, etc. If you also had to ensure specific proportions of men and women, of gays and straights, of elders and younger people, etc., the process of selecting a jury would never end.