After the strike, it was hard to get juries from some mining areas to convict.
For its Black Strikes project Australian volunteer Ursula Noyes travelled around Louisiana for nine months investigating instances where prosecutors struck out black jury members to achieve all-white or near all-white juries in death penalty cases.
This is despite an impressive and sometimes unacknowledged history of progressive social campaigning: in the 1920s, the WI fought for the right for women to sit on juries, and in the 1940s it argued for equal pay.
The test was designed to reduce the risk that juries would reach their conclusions on unreliable evidence.
To assist them and reduce the risk of juries reaching perverse decisions, the lord chief justice called for juries to be given written "primers" on relevant scientific concepts.
Even so, the lord chief justice continued, further improvements were needed in the use of forensic science if juries and the wider public were not to lose faith in it.
In all states, the definition of where the line is drawn is "reasonable" force, with prosecutors or juries left to decide on what constitutes reasonable.
Although he avoided the phrase himself, Thomas appeared concerned that juries were being blinded by science.
The cases last for months, sometimes years - they are incredibly difficult for juries for time and complexity reasons; it is over 30 years since Lord Roskill recommended the change because otherwise such cases often collapse at huge expense and the guilty go free.
These short, plain-English guides would be restricted to areas on which there was consensus within the scientific community but could assist juries in understanding the concepts in cases they were hearing.
Once Negroes in the South are allowed to register to vote easily, the whole fraternity of white supremacists will crumble overweight sheriffs, smiling governors, prejudiced juries and all.
