"Arizona launches a bold new experiment to limit racist convictions"

From Vox, via NACDL's news-of-interest:

Arizona’s conservative state Supreme Court took a surprising step last week that could lead to juries in that state being more racially diverse, and thus less likely to treat racial minorities more harshly.

It announced that it will eliminate “peremptory challenges” in Arizona — a practice that allows trial lawyers to remove jurors from a case, often for arbitrary or ill-defined reasons.

Although criminal justice reformers, including some who sit on the Supreme Court of the United States, have warned for decades that peremptory challenges are often used to exclude jurors because of their race, the practice remains widespread in the United States. Arizona will be the first state to eliminate peremptory challenges entirely; the state’s new rules will take effect in January.