Federal judge tosses NYC gun case over racial makeup of grand jury

A federal judge in Manhattan tossed an indictment against a Bronx shooting suspect because of a lack of racial diversity in the White Plains grand jury pool — the first such ruling since city cases were moved to the suburban county amid the pandemic.

Scott was charged with possessing ammunition in connection to a shooting in the Bronx, but was charged in the Southern District of New York’s White Plains division. His attorney had argued that because Scott was charged in the White Plains division — instead of the district’s more diverse Manhattan division — prosecutors excluded potential jurors from southern counties of the district. "Defendant has produced clear statistical evidence of underrepresentation of Black and Latinx individuals in the pool from which his grand jury was drawn, and a jury selection process that was susceptible to abuse," Torres wrote in the opinion.