"Sounding Black": Court-sanctioned Racial Stereotyping

Lis Wiehl

excerpted Wrom: GGMEPYOQKEDOTWFAOBUZXUWLSZLKBRNVWWCUFP Courtroom: Court-sanctioned Racial Stereotyping, 18 Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal 185-210, 185-188 (Spring, 2002)(179 Footnotes)

Do you think you can identify the color of a person's skin by listening to his voice? If so, would you swear to it in court? Would you know if you harbor any deep-seated racial prejudices? Would you recognize them if you did? Would you testify to a defendant's guilt in a criminal trial based on listening to his voice and deciding on his race--never having seen him? If you would, you will applaud a recent state supreme court ruling.

Kentucky's highest court recently held that a white police officer, who had not seen the black defendant allegedly involved in a drug transaction, could, nevertheless, identify him as a participant by saying that a voice on an audiotape "sounded black." The police officer based this "identification" on the fact that the defendant was the only black man in the room at the time of the transaction and that an audio-tape-- contained the voice of a man the officer said sounded black selling crack cocaine to a white informant planted by the police.

In affirming the trial court, a majority of the Kentucky Supreme Court held that because witnesses are routinely permitted to give their lay opinions about certain common observations, such as a person's age or whether he or she was intoxicated, it was proper for this police officer to opine about a man's race, based solely on what he had heard. The majority reasoned that because witnesses have been allowed to testify about accent or dialect, it was proper for this police officer to testify about the defendant's race, and thus his identity without having seen him.

All of the participants in this trial were white, except the defendant. At trial, the prosecution needed to prove that it was the defendant who sold crack cocaine to the state's informant. The testifying police officer had never seen the defendant, and the defendant denied the charge. To make matters worse, this was a case involving crack cocaine--a drug predominately associated with African Americans. The police officer's testimony that the person he heard offering to sell the drugs to the under-cover police officer "sounded black," and the fact that the defendant was the only black person at the apartment where the sale was made, may have clinched the prosecution's case.

To this author's ear, this Kentucky decision sounds like court- sanctioned racial stereotyping. After all, what does it mean to "sound" black, white, Asian, or Native American? What biases, conscious or otherwise, spring to mind when one hears that a particular individual is of a certain race? The Kentucky decision is not an isolated example: courts in Arkansas, Missouri, and Washington state have issued similar rulings. Do these rulings allow jurors to decide a case on an improper basis--racial stereotyping?

Part I of this Article details the facts behind the Kentucky Supreme Court's decision in Clifford v. Commonwealth. Part II analyzes the argument propounded by the majority in Clifford v. Commonwealth that allowing lay witnesses to testify about race, based on voice alone, is akin to allowing them to testify about things people commonly perceive by sight--such as intoxication or Part II also addresses the issue of whether race identification, based on voice alone, is as reliable as lay witness testimony on accent, dialect, or gender. Part III argues that even if race identification testimony, based on voice alone, is an inference that lay witnesses commonly and reliably draw, such testimony is inadmissible because its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice. In addition, Part III discusses the cases cited by the Clifford majority and their treatment of the issue raised by Clifford as to the risk of prejudice associated with identifying an accent or dialect, particularly in drug cases. In Part IV of this Article, the author discusses racial profiling which leads to selective enforcement and selective prosecution-particularly in crack cocaine cases. Finally, in Part IV the author argues that race identification, based on voice alone, is uniquely troubling because it confers judicial legitimacy on the admission of evidence based on racial bias and stereotyping.

[a1]. Associate Professor, Director of the Trial Advocacy Program, University of Washington School of Law, and former Federal Prosecutor. J.D., Harvard Law School, 1987.

Origins of the Drug Courier Profile

Alberto B. Lopez

Alberto B. Lopez, Racial Profiling and Whren: Searching for Objective Evidence of The Fourth Amendment on the Nation's Roads, 90 Kentucky Law Journal 75-122, 79-84, 120-122 (2001-2002) (271 Footnotes)

During the 1980s, the nation initiated a "war on drugs" that not only increased penalties for violations of narcotics laws, but also created the need to build more prisons amid the cries for more punishment of crime in general. As an effort to wage a war on drugs, federal police authorities turned to profiling as a method to enhance their chances of catching drug smugglers. Knowing that drug couriers often used air travel to transport drugs, the Drug Enforcement Agency ("DEA") used information from both local law enforcement agencies and airline personnel to create a probabilistic picture of those most likely to smuggle drugs on airlines based upon shared characteristics of past offenders. The DEA utilized the drug courier profile by stationing plainclothes agents at various places within airports. The agents then observed travelers to see if any of them matched the characteristics of the profile. If any of the travelers matched some of the profile's traits, in the eyes of the patrolling officer, the officer then scrutinized their behavior more closely and could approach sufficiently suspicious individuals for brief questioning. In short, the profile allowed police officials to focus on individual travelers who matched predetermined criteria while largely ignoring most of the flying public.

Although intended to identify those most likely to commit drug trafficking offenses, the malleable nature of the drug courier profile allowed officers to use a great deal of discretion when matching travelers to the profile. In United States v. Van Lewis, the first case to discuss the drug courier profile, the characteristics that aroused the suspicion of federal agents included: "(1) the use of small denomination currency for ticket purchases; (2) travel to and from major drug import centers, especially for short periods of time; (3) the absence of luggage or use of empty suitcases on trips which normally require extra clothing; and (4) travel under an alias." As the number of court challenges increased, the number of characteristics in the undocumented profile expanded because of their discussion and favorable treatment by the courts. Travelers aroused the suspicion of agents by being the first to deplane, being the last to deplane, being nervous during an investigative stop, being calm during an investigative stop, traveling alone, having a traveling companion, buying a round trip ticket, buying a one-way ticket, carrying a small bag of luggage, carrying a medium bag of luggage, or carrying large pieces of luggage, among a number of other factors. In addition to these traits associated with travel, other characteristics not associated with travel, such as being African-American and Hispanic, also caught the attention of ever vigilant agents. In sum, the "informal, apparently unwritten, checklist" of all-encompassing factors that comprised the drug courier profile gave police authorities unbridled discretion to stop and investigate anyone traveling by air.

Bolstered by court approval and alleged statistical success in airports, the DEA decided to implement the profiling technique on the nation's highways, thereby bringing the war on drugs to the streets and individual motorists. To interdict drugs on the highway, in contrast to the profile used in airports, police chiefly used broad racial descriptions as a basis to suspect individual motorists of involvement in drug trafficking. For example, one profile used to identify potential drug couriers using the highways of Florida during the 1980s, listed among other racial categories, African-American males, twenty to fifty years old; Colombian males, twenty-five to thirty-five years old; and African-Americans and Colombians wearing "lots of gold." In Colorado, one sheriff's department implemented a profile of those likely to be drug traffickers that included being African-American or Hispanic as one of its key factors.

Police officials justify the connection between race and drug trafficking activities without individualized suspicion because, according to the former Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, "it's most likely a minority group that's involved with that." In the minds of many police officers, suspecting minorities of drug-related crimes is not racism, but "an unfortunate byproduct of sound police policies." Thus, police culture embraces the vague racial descriptions that indiscriminately place minority drivers under a generalized web of suspicion for drug trafficking in the name of continuing the war on drugs.

. . .

A fine line exists between the exercise of police discretion in the pursuit of criminal law enforcement and transgressing the protection bestowed upon citizens by the Fourth Amendment. Racial profiling crosses that line by subjecting individual minority drivers to unreasonable searches based upon the race of the individual driver. Indeed, the practice is called "racial profiling" for a reason--because race is the determinative factor in the alchemy of investigative traffic stops. However, an individual's race is insufficiently correlated with narcotics violations to justify placing all minority drivers under suspicion of drug-related crimes without individualized suspicion of wrongdoing. Statistics show that minorities do not use drugs to a larger extent than their demographic makeup would predict, which suggests that the suspicion levied upon minority drivers is unwarranted. Nevertheless, the legitimacy of the traffic code masks the illegitimate use of race and its alleged link to criminality in search decisions by providing police officers with a justifiable reason to stop vehicles whether or not the officers normally enforce the given traffic code provisions. Moreover, the Court's totality of circumstances test further blurs the reasonableness determination because it neither accounts for the initial objective facts upon which an officer bases his suspicion nor the compulsion inherent in a police- minority encounter. To provide one or more pieces of evidence to be weighed among the "totality of circumstances" in the individual case, the New Jersey Consent Decree requires that officers document the facts that they used prior to the search that led them to suspect an individual motorist of criminal wrongdoing. A record of the facts patrols the fine line between justifiable police discretion and Fourth Amendment violation by making an individual officer more accountable for the exercise of discretion during an individual traffic stop and the damage thereof.

As a corollary to the benefits accruing to individuals who possess a record of the facts upon which an officer based suspicion prior to the search, evidence of unreasonable searches in individual cases serves as a foundation to challenge the practice of racial profiling as a general investigative tool. Armed with evidence recorded prior to searches, minority groups could ban together to bring a class-action suit against police departments and states utilizing racial profiling to identify potential criminals on the highways. In fact, the American Civil Liberties Union recently filed a class-action suit alleging that the Maryland State Police use racial profiling to target minorities along one particular Maryland interstate. In each case, police found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the minority driven vehicles. Because the lack of contraband recovery is not the sine qua non of unreasonable searches, a record of the facts used by the officer to justify suspicion provides the trier of fact with a clearer picture of the totality of circumstances involved with the search in the case. In the end, if class-action suits are successful, using documented evidence of suspicion not only strengthens individual challenges to racial profiling, but also removes the incentive for police officers to search minority driven cars following minor, normally unpunished traffic violations without justifiable suspicion. If the fruits of the unreasonable search sour, the desire to pursue the fruits erodes.

On a fundamental level, the failure to hold officers accountable for unreasonable discretionary searches highlights the disparate experiences with criminal law enforcement by the various racial segments of the nation's population. Any police practice where racial disparities in enforcement exist not only serves to heighten the tension between police and minority communities, but also challenges the race-neutral legitimacy of the law. If police search the vehicles of minority drivers for drugs, the numbers of minorities charged with narcotics violations reflect their efforts. In turn, the elevated number of minorities charged with drug-related crimes provides a foundation to continue using the racial profile. As a result, a feedback loop develops where the suspicion of minority drivers on the road not only justifies racial disparities in law enforcement in the eyes of the police, but also generates the general minority perception that the eyes of Justice do not see them as equal citizens. Despite the ostensible success of the civil rights movement, a vast schism remains between theory and reality in the most penal aspect of our body of law. Although Justice is theoretically blind in criminal matters, she sees color--particularly on the road.

[a1]. J.S.D. Candidate, Stanford Law School. J.S.M. 1999, Stanford Law School; J.D. 1998, Indiana University School of Law--Indianapolis; M.S. 1995, University of Notre Dame; B.S. 1991, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

Race, Racism and the Law
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