Can Michael Addison Get a Fair Trial in NH?

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It's a high-profile, high-stakes case.
An African American man is charged with shooting a white police officer.
Attorney Stephen Bright, with the Southern Center for Human Rights, says the Addison case amounts to a perfect storm for a capital conviction.
Bright: The studies that have been done in Georgia and Pennsylvania and other places have found that the death penalty is much more likely when the victim is white, and you ratchet it up another notch when you have a white victim and an African American defendent. That's particularly the case where the jury is all made up of members of the same race as the victim and not the defendent.
Bright recently argued a death penalty case before the U.S. Supreme Court -- and won.
In the case of Snyder v. Louisiana, prosecutors were found to have improperly picked an all-white jury in the case of a black man accused of murder.
The high court tossed out the man's conviction.
Although the New Hampshire case is not identical the Supreme Court case does highlight the pivotal role of race in the legal system.
And on those grounds, Addison’s lawyers argue that the state's jury selection procedures violate Addison's right to a jury of his peers.
Law Professor Buzz Scherr teaches criminal procedure and evidence at Franklin Pierce Law Center.
Scherr: If the process the state is currently using undereprepresents whatever the amount of African Americans there are in New Hampshire, ….then it may not be a fair process for jury selection.
But the state argues that Addison's lawyers have not presented any evidence that either Hispanics or blacks are significantly underepresented on state juries.
In1998, the state added the list of registered voters to the Department of Motor Vehicles list to form a jury pool.
The DMV list is generally considered more likely to include minorities.
Addison's lawyers claim that by adding the voter list, the state diluted minority representation on juries.
The state argues that courts have recognized that using a "blended" list is constitutional.
But Addison's lawyers claim there are other problems,.
Young people and young people with non-disqualifying criminal records are underrepresented.
And then there is the low pay for jurors.
The defendant’s lawyers argue that at $20 a day, most low-income workers can't afford to participate in jury duty.
These are the people who also form Addison's peer group.
John Kacavas worked as a prosecutor before he turned to criminal defense law.
Kacavas: They're going to attack every element of this trial, including the issue of where these people come from who sit on our grand juries, where these people come from who sit in the venire and from which ultimately the petit jury that's going to render a verdict in this case is drawn.
That's as it should be, he says, given the gravity of the case.
Attorney Mike Iacopino heads the New Hampshire Association Of Criminal Defense Lawyers also a defense attorney.
He says these jury selection issues are everpresent.
Iacopino: What brings this to a head is the state's decision to try to execute this young man. ….Yeah, it's a problem in everyday juries, but once you put somebody's life on the line, you've got to expect that it's only then that people are really going to look at the issues and pursue it. In fact, says Iacopino, the state could have approached the case differently.
Iacopino: Why isn't the state in Addison agreeing to some other kind of selection process? Why isn't the state going to the court and saying let's make this as fair as possible, let's develop a way, aside from motor vehicle licenses and voter registration lists, to make sure that we get those people who we systematically exclude because of where we draw jurors from.
But Kacavas says the state is not obligated to go out and search for representatives from these groups.
Kacavas: It's pretty well settled that the jury venire -- that pool from which the ultimate petite jury is drawn -- doesn't have to be an identical replication of minority or distinctive group populuation in the general population; it doesn't have to mirror it. They have to provide a minimum level of protection and that means they can't be excluding these groups.
In his own experience, Kacavas has been satisfied with the jury system.
Kacavas: I did defend a minority individual in a rape case before 12 Caucasian jurors who found my client not guilty and that taught me a lot. I think most jurors do the right thing.
But Attorney Ron Abramson, who often represents minority defendents has found that African Americans and Hispanics bring an important point of view as jurors.
Abramson: A young African American is likely to have a completely different perspective on the way the police might treat a person such as Mr. Addison. On the way things work when it comes to being accused of having done something wrong.
And according to Addison's lawyers what minorities bring to a capital murder jury can mean the difference between life and death.
They cite a sudy that found that in the absence of black male jurors, death sentences were imposed in 71.9 percent of the cases.
That’s compared to 42.9 percent when one black male was on the jury.
The hearing on the Addison case is expected to last several days.
For NHPR News in Manchester, I'm Ellen Grimm.