Can a jury's vote be nullified , if majority of the jury is found to have leaning towards a certain political and racial group hence causing a bias?

Question

In U.S. multiple ways have been politically implemented through which minorities don't have a huge representation , even in the jury. So , can the person who is trying to be convincted of a crime , ask to nullify jury's vote , unless the political and racial views of each jury member is clearly stated .

In the vice news documentary - https://youtu.be/3oIKv_TIk0I , It has been mentioned that the group of people who burned down a mosque , are asking the judge to change the location from which jury has to be selected because the area from which their jury is to be selected is less conservative and if such a condition has been provided then will it not be unconstitutional , because doing so will bring down justice wrt political alignment.

Answer 1

Historically (long, long ago to the point that there is no leading case establishing this rule), you could challenge a verdict based upon a failure of a judge to dismiss a juror for cause (or for improperly dismissing a juror for cause) when this was an abuse of discretion. Race is an improper reason to dismiss a juror for cause. Political views often mandate dismissal of a juror for cause if they prevent a juror from being impartial or create an appearance of bias in the jury.

More recently, race or sex (but not political opinion) based exercise of peremptory challenges (which are otherwise not for cause) was a ground upon which a verdict could be challenged. The leading case is Batson v. Kentucky (1986).

Just last year (2017), in a case out of Colorado, Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed a verdict to be overturned because of racially discriminatory (and again, not political) motives a juror expressed for convicting a defendant in the course of jury deliberations. Jury deliberations themselves had previously been sacrosanct and not subject to investigation in the absence of an outsider interference (e.g. a third party bribe presented to a juror).