Court Orders New Assault Trial Due To Racially Imbalanced Jury

PLYMOUTH, MA — A Plymouth County Court judge violated an African-American man's right to a fair trial when he excluded jurors who said they may be affected by racially charged language, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said in a ruling issued Friday. Dominick R. Alves, of Onset, was convicted on three counts of assault and batter with a dangerous weapon by an all-white jury in 2016 when he was 21. Alves was accused of stabbing a man at a graduation party in 2013 when he was 18.

The court ordered a new trial for Alves, saying the trial judge should have asked potential jurors if they could be fair and impartial instead of asking them if the use of racial slurs by the victim and witnesses would affect their opinions. The end result was that 11 of 29 potential jurors were eliminated because they said the language would sway their opinion of witnesses. Two of those potential jurors were "the only identifiable people of color," the court wrote.

"The consequence," the appeals court wrote in the decision, "was that the defendant was tried by an all-white jury that did not contain a representative cross-section of the community, and whose selection denied his right to an impartial jury."

According to court records, a fight broke out when one of Alves' friends was asked to leave the party. During the melee a white man was punched and fell to the ground. John Roche III confronted Alves and his friends and demanded to know who punched his father. Roche used racial slurs during the confrontation.

When the younger Roche was found stabbed, his friends pointed out Alves as his assailant. Those witnesses also used racial slurs.