"W.T.," as he is known in court papers, is a 53-year-old African-American man whose candid remarks about race during jury selection in a murder case five years ago were the subject this month of oral arguments before the state Supreme Court.

Winston Taylor, who affectionately is known as "Brother Winston" for his work at a New London church, has a master's degree in social work and supervises social workers with the Department of Children and Families. Taylor, who grew up in Windsor Locks and lives in Norwich, has never been arrested but said his father and all five of his brothers have been incarcerated.

He was honest, he said, when he was questioned about his perception of police and the criminal justice system while being interviewed as a potential juror in the murder trial of a mixed-race man named Evan J. Holmes. 

"I said that even as a grown man today, I'm afraid when the police come to me because of what I've seen happen to my family," Taylor said during an interview this past week. "I said I have bad thoughts of the police, being an African-American man and knowing they can take your life for no reason."

Taylor went on to tell the lawyers in the Holmes case that, in his experience as an African-American, sometimes people don't receive a fair trial or may be disproportionately incarcerated based on race. He noted he also knows of good police officers who give back to their communities, and that if selected as a juror, he could be fair to both the prosecution and the defense. "I said, 'I make decisions every day on people's lives and I will not be biased. If I can do that in my profession, I should be able to serve on a jury.'"

Taylor was not selected to serve on the 12-member jury that went on to find Holmes guilty of murder, and the process by which he was dismissed has become the subject of a case before the Connecticut Supreme Court.

He said during an interview this past week that he's pleased the high court has taken up the issue. He said he wasn't looking to serve on a jury in a murder trial but left the New London courthouse disappointed.

"I felt bad that day," he said. "I said, 'Here we go again, another area of injustice where I can't serve on the court because they think I'm going to be the one that was biased.'"

The Supreme Court engaged in a lively discussion of the case on Jan. 18, with justices noting that no one was accusing the prosecutor in the Holmes case of discrimination and that it's a complex issue with which everyone is struggling. Chief Justice Richard A. Robinson, the state's first African-American chief justice and an expert on implicit bias, sat on the case.

'Batson challenge'

In September 2013, Senior Assistant State's Attorney Paul J. Narducci exercised a peremptory challenge after eliciting information about Taylor's background and asking whether he'd had positive or negative feelings about police. Attorneys for both sides have a limited number of peremptory challenges in which they can reject a juror without giving a reason.

Defense attorney William T. Koch Jr. wanted Taylor on the jury and mounted a "Batson challenge." The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1986 in Batson v. Kentucky that a prosecutor could not use peremptory challenges to exclude jurors based solely on their race. James Kirkland Batson was an African-American man convicted of burglary and receipt of stolen goods in Louisville, Ky., by an all-white jury. Four African-Americans had been excluded from jury service when the presiding judge exercised peremptory challenges.

In arguing against the Batson challenge, Narducci said he had stricken the social worker from the jury for a "race-neutral" reason.

"If a white — a Caucasian person came in and said, I don't like being followed by the cops because I see a number of cops punch friends of mine in the face, it's not because he is a Caucasian, it's because of life's experiences," Narducci had argued. "And I think that's what I would be arguing, that the comments that were made were not because of his ethnicity or his race, but rather his — his expressed opinions. And I think it's a distinction, I think it's a legitimate distinction, but I defer to Your Honor with respect to this.''

The trial judge, Barbara Bailey Jongbloed, upheld the peremptory challenge and ruled that Taylor was being dismissed for a "race-neutral" reason. Three African-Americans served on the jury.

Holmes, who is serving a 70-year sentence, appealed his conviction, in part based on Taylor's dismissal from the jury.

The state Appellate Court upheld Holmes' conviction but Judge Douglas S. Lavine wrote in a separate, concurring opinion that the case illustrated a serious flaw in the process that needs to be fixed to encourage participation in, and trust of, the judicial process by all segments of society. He suggested trial judges be given the discretion to disallow the use of a peremptory challenge when the prospective juror is part of a "suspect class," such as African-American, and the judge determines the person could be fair.

The Supreme Court took up the issue, and will be ruling sometime in the future on the Holmes case and in State vs. Darnell Moore, another New London-area murder case involving race and jury selection. Attorneys for Moore, an African-American man who was convicted and sentenced to 53 years in prison for the 2010 murder of Namdi Smart in Norwich, argue that the jury pool for his trial, with few African-American men, was not a fair representation of the community.

'Right to serve'

Winston Taylor, whose candid responses during jury selection are now part of Connecticut case law history, has more experience than most with the subject matter. 

For the past 20 years, Taylor has led the prison ministry at Shiloh Baptist Church in New London. He runs group meetings inside prisons and works to help people re-entering society. Since 2011, he has organized an annual gathering at Shiloh to bring awareness to issues such as mass incarceration of people of color and poverty and to develop strategies to prevent crime and to forge community partnerships.

Jury selection was one of the topics of the annual prison ministry gathering in October. A cross-section of the community has attended the annual forums, which focus on prevention and reform.

In addition to his prison ministry work, Taylor notes he has fostered young men, helped raised his nephew and served as a mentor to African-American boys, "to keep them from getting in trouble in the first place." 

Koch, the attorney who represented Holmes at trial, said the appeal has raised an interesting but little discussed aspect of the jury system.

"Nobody seems to think about that fact that jurors have a right to serve," Koch said in a phone interview. "It's all about the prosecutor, the defendant. But our whole jury system is based on that."

k.florin@theday.com