NY man gets hearing to determine if black jurors were excluded due to race

A Staten Island man convicted of possessing stolen property will get a new hearing to determine whether three prospective black jurors were dismissed due to their race, a state appellate court ruled.

Attorneys for Wesley Brissett — a 34-year-old black man who was sentenced to a year in jail — had sufficiently raised a presumption of discrimination based on Staten Island prosecutors’ “exercise of peremptory challenges” against the black jurors during selection at his 2016 trial, the state Appellate Division panel ruled last Wednesday. Brissett, of Staten Island’s Mariners Harbor section, was found guilty of possessing items stolen from a Port Richmond home, but was acquitted on burglary charges, the Staten Island Advance reported.