The voices not heard at family gatherings are often the most important. The voices of "Tyrique," "Shaniqua," "Jamal" and their peers were denied a hearing at the recent gathering of New Jersey's legal family in a Judicial Conference on Jury Selection. This despite the fact that the once and future treatment of Black people in the justice system is how our democracy shall be judged. Rather than face the need to explore why these people should be left with their current complement of judicially supervised peremptory challenges, the Conference's convening authority turned a deaf ear to the voices of this Black cohort.

A Black defendant in New Jersey confronts the dilemma of selecting a jury from a racially unrepresentative array. They do so in a process presided over by a judge reluctant to grant challenges for cause. It is now beyond question that virtually every non-Black venireperson will have implicit bias against Blacks. We now wish to greatly reduce their opportunity to use peremptories despite the fact that the Judiciary's own expert did not find that peremptories are a tool for driving Blacks from juries. To then conduct a two-day colloquium without hearing from those who have used peremptories on behalf of these defendants mocks the idea of careful deliberation.