McKnight's trial is raising the race question once again because of the history of Jefferson County Louisiana where the trial is occurring.

Then-Sheriff Newell Normand claimed in a Dec. 6, 2016, news conference that race wasn’t a factor in the case, then proceeded to read from messages full of expletives and racial slurs that he said had been directed at him and other officials as a result of their handling of the case. ...
This is the same Jefferson Parish where former Sheriff Harry Lee said in 2006: “We know the crime is in the black community. Why should I waste time in the white community?”
Jefferson Parish is a county where blacks make up more than 25 percent of the population, but only one black woman is on the Gasser jury. ...

From In Justice Today:
"Jefferson Parish has a habit of keeping black residents off juries. A 2003 report by the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center, a capital defense nonprofit, found that Jefferson Parish prosecutors removed black prospective jurors in felony trials at more than three times the rate they removed white ones. Though racial discrimination in juries is unconstitutional, the Louisiana Supreme Court has studiously ignored most challenges. The high rate of exclusion means that 80 percent of criminal trials in Jefferson Parish have no black representation on the jury, according to the civil rights nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative."

We know that this is by design. Louisiana as a whole has one of the worst track records when it comes to its criminal-justice system. It is one of just two states in the country that allow nonunanimous jury verdicts—a system that was put in place to nullify black influence on juries.

As In Justice Today notes, white men who kill black men in the U.S. are eight times more likely to have that killing ruled as justified.
So, with just one black woman on a jury full of white people—what does that mean when it comes to justice for Joe McKnight?
https://www.theroot.com/can-1-black-...aye-1822339718