African-American Dr. Michael Shannon, MD, MPH, was the only person of color playing a key role in the Rhode Island Lead Paint Public Nuisance Trial II. All the others who testified, the attorneys who represented the plaintiff and the defendants, and the jury members were, like me, white. Why does this seem to be the default in civil litigation? And, incidentally, Dr. Shannon dazzled the jurors, I found out in my interviews with four of them.
Someone besides me, such as an influential member on the jury, is going to notice this absence of people of color in corporate trials like lead paint. That person could nudge the other members into perceiving the stagecraft of the trial as set for the wrong time and place in America.
Advice to both sides, should there be a RI III or a lead paint trial in Santa Clara, California and Ohio, have all elements of the litigation, including jury selection, more representative of the increasingly heterogeneous society we've become.
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