The right to a jury that is a fair cross-section of the community is a well-known concept for criminal defense attorneys. However, the legal and practical complexities in bringing such a challenge create substantial barriers to success in pursuing this core constitutional right.

This FREE two-part defender-only training will help equip defense attorneys with how to bring these critical challenges. Taught by leading jury experts, Professors Nina Chernoff and Russell Lovell, defenders will learn what courts get wrong about fair cross-section challenges, how to properly establish a prima facie challenge, what you should know about your jurisdiction's jury system, and what pitfalls to avoid.  

The program is free but you must register for both sessions to attend and receive program materials.

Program Details

Session I:

Date: April 26, 2024

Time: 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm CT| 11:00 am - 12:30 pm MT

CLE: 1.5 Hrs. (Activity ID: 263949)

Session I Registration

Session II:

Date and Time: TBA

Faculty:

Nina Chernoff, Professor, CUNY School of Law

Nina Chernoff is a Professor at the CUNY School of Law. Professor Chernoff’s research focuses on the jury, primarily the right to a jury selected from a fair cross-section of the community.
•    Her article, No Records, No Right: Discovery and the Fair Cross-Section Guarantee, was cited by the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Plain in support of a Constitutional right to discovery of jury selection records, and was also featured on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
•    Her article Wrong About the Right: How Courts Undermine the Fair Cross-Section Guarantee by Confusing it With Equal Protection was featured by the Getting Scholarship Into Courts Project of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (May 2015).
Her article Black to the Future: The State Action Doctrine & The White Jury is a tribute to the scholarship of Charles Black and a critique of courts’ use of state action doctrine to analyze fair cross-section cases.
Professor Chernoff also works with courts committed to assembling diverse jury pools. For example, she gave the keynote presentation at the Washington State Supreme Court’s symposium on Jury Diversity in Washington: A Hollow Promise or Hopeful Future?, and is currently a consultant to the New Jersey Judiciary. Professor Chernoff also works with attorneys and communities seeking to diversify their jury pools through advocacy or litigation. For example, she recently helped draft a letter recommending improvements to the jury plan of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California.
Prior to joining CUNY’s faculty, Professor Chernoff was an Acting Assistant Professor of Lawyering at New York University Law School. Before entering academia, she was a staff attorney in the Special Litigation Division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia (PDS). In that capacity she litigated systemic criminal justice issues, including prosecutorial misconduct, jury representation, and the reliability of forensic evidence. Prior to PDS, she was a staff attorney and Zubrow Fellow at Juvenile Law Center and served as a law clerk for the Honorable Thomas L. Ambro, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Professor Chernoff graduated from Georgetown University Law Center, magna cum laude, in 2003; she received her M.S. with distinction in Justice, Law & Society from the School of Public Affairs at American University in 2000, and her B.A. in Sociology from Bryn Mawr College in 1997.
 

Thomas Riley, Public Defender, Douglas County Public Defender

Thomas Riley earned an undergraduate degree in American Studies from St. Michael's College in Winooski, Vermont, in 1972, and subsequently obtained his law degree from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1975. Commencing a notable legal career, Thomas served as an Assistant Public Defender in Douglas County from 1975 to 1983. Rising through the ranks, Thomas held the position of Chief Deputy Public Defender in Douglas County, Nebraska, from 1983 to 1997 and since 1997, has served as the Public Defender for Douglas County, Nebraska.

Russell Lovell, Professor, Drake University School of Law

Drake University Law Professor Emeritus Russell Lovell taught constitutional law, employment discrimination and civil rights law, and remedies from 1976-2014, and served ten years as Associate Dean (collaborating with co-honoree Dean David Walker) and directed Drake’s Clinical Programs from 1995-1999.  Russ mentored more than eighty Public Service Scholars as founder/director of Drake’s Public Service Scholarship Program.  Drake University honored him as its Outstanding Professor for Experiential Learning for his creation of a practice observation experience of an actual Iowa jury trial for the entire 1L class—and Bloomberg Law, in 2023, recognized it as 1 of the 10 most innovative Law School programs. It was during Russ’s clerkship for Federal Appeals Judge Floyd Gibson that he first helped break down racial barriers in an Arkansas school desegregation case.   

Thereafter Russ served as Director of Litigation for the Legal Services Organization of Indianapolis, specializing in Federal Court civil right litigation.   His prison reform advocacy secured a Federal Court injunction closing a 48-cell “dungeon-like” solitary confinement unit in Indiana’s maximum-security prison and played a major role in the 1972 landmark Supreme Court due process ruling in Morrissey v. Brewer that guaranteed parolees a fair hearing before their paroles could be revoked.

2023 is Russ’s fiftieth year as an NAACP pro bono civil rights lawyer!  His proudest accomplishments were his service as lead counsel on not one, but two, NAACP pattern and practice employment discrimination cases that were resolved by comprehensive Consent Decrees that integrated the Indiana State Police Department in the 1970’s and the Des Moines Fire Department in the 1980’s and 1990’s.  Russ served as NAACP co-counsel on key remedies stages of the Indianapolis and Kansas City school desegregation cases, including successful advocacy before the Supreme Court in Jenkins v. Missouri in 1989.

Since 2014 Lovell and Walker have filed nine NAACP Amicus Briefs in the Iowa and Nebraska Supreme Courts.   Their advocacy has reinvigorated Iowa’s jury trial jurisprudence, expanded jury service eligibility to more than 160,000 former prisoners who had their citizenship rights restored, and resulted in enactment of the Des Moines Unbiased Policing Ordinance. To use the words of former Drake Law Dean Alan Vestal, “the NAACP has repeatedly honored Russ Lovell for his unwavering civil rights commitment at every level of the NAACP”—Local (Des Moines), State (both Indiana and Iowa), 10-state central US Region (50^th anniversary of Brown v. Board in Topeka, Kansas), and the Foot Soldier in the Sand Award at the 2005 National Convention.  The Notre Dame Alumni Association awarded him the Fr. Louis Putz social justice advocacy award in 2023.  

In 2022 he was elected an American Bar Foundation Fellow. In 2020 Russ received the Iowa National Bar Association’s Journey Award for “demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.”  https://www.naacpdesmoines.org/post/meeting-at-the-monument-a-celebration-of-diversity-within-the-iowa-legal-community.  In 2018 the ACLU of Iowa honored Russ with its Louise Noun Award from for “having displayed uncommon courage on behalf of civil liberties in the state,”  https://www.aclu-ia.org/en/news/betty-andrews-russell-lovell-and-david-walker-naacp-win-aclu-iowa-louise-noun-award.   In 2013 the Iowa Juneteenth Celebration honored Russ as its “Iowa Citizen of the Year.”