Iowa court affirms process that may exclude Black jurors
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday rejected a Black man's argument that he was denied his right to an impartial jury because of a flawed process that excluded Black people and resulted in only white jurors.
It is the second time the state’s high court heard an appeal from Kenneth Lee Lilly, who was convicted for helping a relative rob a southeast Iowa bank in 2016. Lilly alleged that his right to an impartial jury under both the U.S. and Iowa constitutions was violated because neither his jury nor the group from which his jury was selected contained any Black people.
Lilly, 57, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for robbery with a mandatory 17 1/2 years to be served before parole eligibility. He was accused of driving Lafayette A. Evans, a relative from Nashville, Tennessee, to a branch of the Fort Madison Bank on June 29, 2016. Evans fired several shots in the bank and at a police officer. He ran away with $224,000 in a backpack but died after being shot by officers.
Lilly was tried in Lee County, where about 3% of the population of 33,000 is Black.
In the first appeal in 2019, the court returned Lilly's case to the district court for a hearing on whether his rights were violated by the jury selection process. The judge rejected his claims and Lilly again appealed.
The court upheld the lower court's decision that he failed to prove Black citizens are excluded from jury pools because they are underrepresented in the voter registration and driver's license lists from which names are drawn in Iowa.
Lawyers for the Iowa attorney general, Lilly and the NAACP, which wrote a friend of the court brief supporting a new trial for Lilly, did not immediately respond to messages.
Lilly claimed that low-income people tend to register to vote and to acquire...