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Jarmak posted:I already said I didn't think one exists Helsing posted:It's good to know that no matter what facts you're presented with your analysis stays the exact same: it's not a problem, and if it is a problem we can't do anything about it. I am sure you are debating this in good faith though.
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Nov 10, 2015 20:46
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I've been arguing since the very beginning that this was a second order effect and trying to implement a solution at this level would do more harm then good because of a lack of acceptable solutions. "Bad Faith" does not mean "Argument I don't like/know how to respond to"
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Nov 10, 2015 20:50
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Jarmak posted:I already said I didn't think one exists So, despite the well known and documented racial disparities that are caused by the current system, too bad so sad for black people affected by it?
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Nov 10, 2015 20:52
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Jarmak posted:I've been arguing since the very beginning that this was a second order effect and trying to implement a solution at this level would do more harm then good because of a lack of acceptable solutions. "Bad Faith" does not mean "Argument I don't like/know how to respond to" Is your opinion that this is the best of all possible systems based on some kind of evidence, or is it possible that you are heavily invested personally in the current system (and are unlikely to ever be affected by it)?
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Nov 10, 2015 20:54
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Jarmak posted:I've been arguing since the very beginning that this was a second order effect and trying to implement a solution at this level would do more harm then good because of a lack of acceptable solutions. "Bad Faith" does not mean "Argument I don't like/know how to respond to" If the entire system is built on racism and perpetuates racism, is incapable of being meaningfully reformed and produces manifestly racist outcomes then what exactly is the meaningful distinction between a "first order" and "second order" effect in this context? Sorry if I have trouble taking you seriously when your position is "the current way of doing things is the best possible system under current conditions". Coincidentally that has been the argument used since the 19th century or earlier to deflect every attempt to improve the situation, from abolitionism to desegregation down to the Great Society programs.
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Nov 10, 2015 21:03
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You can't just say, "things are bad and need to change" while making no attempt to examine why the current status quo came about in the first place, and refusing to offer any sort of concrete proposal of changes that could be considered on their merits.
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Nov 10, 2015 21:17
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Jarmak posted:What steps do you think can/should be taken? Overturn a conviction when evidence comes to light that the prosecutors culled the jury pool based on racially discriminatory intent
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Nov 10, 2015 21:42
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^^^^^^^^^^^ & Jarmak posted:What steps do you think can/should be taken? Alternative jury selection methodologies, some of which have already been presented Recording / making public attorney/firm based jury decisions Stronger scrutiny over stated jury elimination reasoning
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Nov 10, 2015 22:29
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esquilax posted:Overturn a conviction when evidence comes to light that the prosecutors culled the jury pool based on racially discriminatory intent Already in place archangelwar posted:^^^^^^^^^^^ Selection via questionnaire is basically blind, and I don't think you'd find anyone on either side of the system that thinks that's better. Ditto with defense attorney's who think trashing their attorney/client privileged is worth getting a couple of extra black people on the jury. Stronger scrutiny how?
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Nov 11, 2015 02:06
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Jarmak posted:I already said I didn't think one exists The thing is, the whole reason that institutions like the justice system with all its procedures and protections is even necessary is to ensure fair and just outcomes despite the biases and irrationality that afflict individual human judgments, that's why we have it instead of throwing people to the mob to exact justice. The answer to discovering bias or corruption in one of our institutions is never "oh just eradicate that bias from all of human society", that's impossible, that will never happen. The only way to address a discovery that one of the systems in an institution is vulnerable to biases is to fix the system to make it more robust, not revolutionize all human modes of thought. This isn't even a progressive thing, this is just a basic functioning-of-society thing. When you find pilots or doctors are prone to a certain type of error, you improve training or procedures or oversight within that profession to eliminate it, you don't throw up your hands and say "welp can't fix this until we first fix our whole society and education system and parenting methods until people just don't make this type of mistake anymore", that's ludicrous. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Nov 11, 2015 |
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Nov 11, 2015 02:39
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You're ignoring the fact that people can look at the system and say, "whoops, even though it has flaws, it looks like it exists in its present form for a good reason, and all the proposed alternatives are worse." You're like the guy who looks at an airplane crash and concludes that the best solution is to eliminate the pilots and let computers do the flying.
Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Nov 11, 2015 |
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Nov 11, 2015 04:27
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 No point in reinforcing cockpit doors I guess, let's just fix all of the underlying problems that create terrorism, and then all this hijacking trouble will be over. You will never eliminate bias and prejudice from society. Saying that a fair and equitable justice system will have to wait until prejudice is gone is just absurd, sorry.
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Nov 11, 2015 04:37
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In the long term there are huge parts of the American system that should be overhauled, root and branch, like elected judges and prosecutors. In the short term I imagine that restrictive oversight on prosecutors would be a better solution than shrugging and concluding there's nothing much to be done. Much in the way that the federal government has had to supervise some former confederate state's to prevent them from systematically disenfranchising black voters I imagine it may be necessary to have greater regulation and oversight of prosecutor behavior, especially in cases where it can be demonstrated that a prosecutor is striking black jurors at a disproportionately high rate. How to implement such a system is a huge question that's mostly beyond the scope of a thread on Something Awful. However, talking about solutions to the problem, even in broad strokes, is hard to do when the loudest voice in the room keeps insisting there's no point even trying to do anything other than waiting for racism to end.
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Nov 11, 2015 04:46
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Why not do something similar to what other multiethnic societies do in power-sharing agreements, something like what we already do under the UCMJ by allowing an enlisted defendant to demand that at least one-third of the jury be made up of enlisted servicemembers. If ethnic bias in jury selection is a problem, allow the defendant the right to demand that some minimum proportion of the jury be made up of people who self-identified as his ethnic group in the last US census or whatever. Make the jury pools bigger if you have to. Then the prosecutor is still free to use whatever peremptory strikes he wants if he gets a "bad feeling" about someone and he can keep going through jurors until he finds enough black people he likes to meet that proportion, that should solve the problem unless he just gets a bad feeling about all black people. A fair and equitable justice system is such a fundamentally important part of society that there's no defense for tolerating demonstrable systematic bias against people for something as pedestrian as skin color.
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Nov 11, 2015 04:54
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An easy solution would be to eliminate peremptory challenges for jurors. (Or limit it to like 1/side/case) If a lawyer wants to strike someone, let them explain their cause, on the record. If we wanted to get even more strict, we could have the lawyers conduct voir dire via written forms. This would ensure that everyone gets asked the same questions, and there's no racial bias in how the answers are treated. Beyond that, the government could pay jurors for missed wages, to minimize hardship exemptions from jury service.
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Nov 11, 2015 05:27
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Jarmak posted:Already in place You would think so, but the fact that two courts passed on this slam dunk of a case making it go to SCOTUS does not reflect well on how it has worked in practice.
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Nov 11, 2015 05:48
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VitalSigns posted:Why not do something similar to what other multiethnic societies do in power-sharing agreements, something like what we already do under the UCMJ by allowing an enlisted defendant to demand that at least one-third of the jury be made up of enlisted servicemembers. Also, it sure is easy to say that the current system is the best when you're not part of a demographic that is being screwed over by it. Even if the current system was the best (which I find extremely doubtful), I would still not fault disadvantaged groups for saying "gently caress you" towards the people advocating for the status quo.
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Nov 11, 2015 06:07
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VitalSigns posted:
VitalSigns posted:Why not do something similar to what other multiethnic societies do in power-sharing agreements, something like what we already do under the UCMJ by allowing an enlisted defendant to demand that at least one-third of the jury be made up of enlisted servicemembers.  Gee, I dunno, maybe because it isn't 1860 any more, and blacks are no longer legally required to show whites respect and deference, making their situation not comparable to that of officers and enlisted, maybe because we shouldn't adopt the worst practices of lovely, strife-riven tribal states, or maybe because the entire point of the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act was to abolish the creation of different classes of citizens who get different legal privileges based on their skin color?How the entire gently caress did you manage to type that sentence without realizing how horrible and un-American it was? Also, fun fact, most JAGs will advise you not to take the enlisted jury. It's a great way to get a panel of senior NCOs who will absolutely hammer you. Ytlaya posted:Also, it sure is easy to say that the current system is the best when you're not part of a demographic that is being screwed over by it. Even if the current system was the best (which I find extremely doubtful), I would still not fault disadvantaged groups for saying "gently caress you" towards the people advocating for the status quo. Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Nov 11, 2015 |
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Nov 11, 2015 08:56
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How does giving a defendant the right to demand a proportion of the jury be made up of his own ethnic group (in the face of proven discrimination against his ethnic group in jury selection in order to bias the justice system against him and deny him an equitable trial) constitute creating special classes of people who get legal privileges based on skin color? And how is the status quo: the unspoken ubiquitous exclusion of black people from juries not a de facto creation of special classes of people who get legal privileges based on skin color, in your mind? E: If you think peremptory strikes are too important to get rid of then okay, but in the face of evidence that they're used to secretly racially tilt the makeup of juries, we either need to require prosecutors to give a valid reason for every strike, or allow peremptory strikes but give the defense the option to require some minimal racial makeup of the jury. One of the two here man, because the alternative is deliberately building bias into our criminal justice system, which is destructive to any idea of a free and just society. You say we should just fix all racial inequality in the country instead, but not only is that practically impossible, but also a biased justice system contributes greatly to racial inequities in society because of the devastating effect wrongful convictions and criminal records have on minority employment prospects, families, and neighborhoods. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 09:13 on Nov 11, 2015 |
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Nov 11, 2015 09:03
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"How does giving [class] [special legal privileges, based entirely upon their class membership] create special classes of people who get legal privileges based on skin color?"
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Nov 11, 2015 09:13
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If the status-quo is giving people legal privileges or disadvantages based on their skin color (and it is) because of private biases and prejudice from prosecutors, we're never going to be able to address it by not noticing skin color. Is this seriously all you've got, "no you're the real racist"? Be a little imaginative please. My proposal doesn't even give anyone special privileges because it is that any defendant would have the right to demand a minimum proportion of their ethnic group on the jury. Is an enlisted person's right to demand enlisted people on the jury a "special privilege"? "Whoa whoa, it's just coincidence that you're being judged by an all-white jury who hates you, I didn't even notice! Maybe you're the racist who is obsessed with color, hey?" 
VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Nov 11, 2015 |
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Nov 11, 2015 09:17
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It's less objectionable if you offer it to everyone, I guess. But it's still an offensive idea because it's predicated on different groups of people being incapable of judging each other fairly; you could be advocating for race-specific legal systems with the exact same arguments. I mean the foundation of the idea is that your peers of different ethnicities aren't really your peers. Ignoring that, even if it were implemented wouldn't fix the problem - assuming it works as you think it would and the different "sections" cancel each other out all you did was generate a bunch of mistrials. I wouldn't be opposed to some kind of monitoring, like if the racial makeup of juries in a given county differed wildly from that of the eligible population some kind of evaluation happened, that'd be fine. I just don't think racial quotas for juries would be effective enough to justify perverting such a major part of the legal system. quote:"Whoa whoa, it's just coincidence that you're being judged by an all-white jury who hates you, I didn't even notice! Maybe you're the racist who is obsessed with color, hey?" Anecdotally, when I did jury duty (black defendant, DV) all four of the black potential jurors that were called up got themselves dismissed on purpose by ranting about the system or the police until the judge told them to shut up. Probably because the pay was only $15 a day.
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Nov 11, 2015 10:14
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Those wouldn't be peremptory strikes though, if you're ranting about how much you hate the justice system then the lawyer wouldn't waste a peremptory strike on you, he'd strike you for cause. It's obviously not a perfect solution: you're right ideally the racial makeup of a jury shouldn't matter. But we don't live in that world, we live in a world where it does matter and where prosecutors, sometimes deliberately like the 1987 case or sometimes unconsciously because of ingrained prejudice, tilt the racial makeup of juries against black defendants. Meddling with the racial composition of juries is something that already commonly happens, only instead of being done explicitly to protect the rights of defendants, it's done individually and secretly across the country to disadvantage them. The quota you're worried about already exists, only it's unpredictable and selected according to the random (un?)conscious whims of different DA's scattered around the country. Prosecutors are already making decisions about racial composition, only now it's left up to their individual biases and prejudices. This is a weak point in the system that allows human biases to creep into the institution we created to remove biases in order to ensure just an equitable outcomes. We could take that decision completely out of the hands of humans by eliminating peremptory strikes and require all prosecutors to show cause. Or we could institute oversight and have some kind of remedy available if the defense can show that the prosecutor has a pattern of racial discrimination in jury selection. Or if it's just really really important that the prosecution be allowed to dismiss black jurors on the basis of intuition, then why not allow the defense to demand a minimum proportion of the defendant's race and keep bringing black/white/Chinese/whatever replacements until the prosecutor finds ones he's happy with or runs out of strikes? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Nov 11, 2015 |
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Nov 11, 2015 10:48
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archangelwar posted:Stronger scrutiny over stated jury elimination reasoning The most important question, though, is "how?". There's already a pretty decent scrutiny system in place. The problem is that the people actually providing that scrutiny are giving blatant racism a pass. The legal system is essentially scrutinizing itself, and then giving itself a pass, saying it can't see any racism in its own workings. How do we eliminate racism from a system that, even when working properly and without system-inherent biases, relies on twelve essentially random people (and a judge) to make decisions? The legal system is highly dependent on people and has minimal external oversight; if a judge decides they're going to be an rear end in a top hat, there's not really much that can be done about it. There's also the camaraderie between fellow legal workers - the prosecutor and defense lawyer may be opponents in the courtroom, but they're co-workers doing their job who work together on a regular basis and might go out to the same coffee shop after work, and the judge has a similar connection to both of them. The defense alleging racism is just doing their job whatever it takes, no hard feelings there, the prosecutor isn't going to be super pissed at the end of the day that the defense suggested he's a nasty person. But when the judge has to make that call, it's different. Is he really ready to accuse the prosecutor, a co-worker who he's probably going to continue to see in the courtroom quite a bit in the future, of being racist? There's a professional relationship there he's not inclined to ruin.
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Nov 11, 2015 17:05
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Main Paineframe posted:The most important question, though, is "how?". Allow independent investigation, follow over the course of a career to detect patterns, make it public - create public pressure to defy patterns, etc.
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Nov 11, 2015 17:14
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VitalSigns posted:How does giving a defendant the right to demand a proportion of the jury be made up of his own ethnic group (in the face of proven discrimination against his ethnic group in jury selection in order to bias the justice system against him and deny him an equitable trial) constitute creating special classes of people who get legal privileges based on skin color? The whole point of Batson was that intentionally tilting the racial makeup of juries in order to get a result is bad and wrong. It turns out that enforcing the court's order is a little difficult, because it's easy for a prosecutor to come up with a reason to dismiss a juror s/he doesn't like. Your solution to this is, "screw it, let's just make explicit discrimination the law of the land instead."? VitalSigns posted:Is this seriously all you've got, "no you're the real racist"? Be a little imaginative please. My proposal doesn't even give anyone special privileges because it is that any defendant would have the right to demand a minimum proportion of their ethnic group on the jury. Is an enlisted person's right to demand enlisted people on the jury a "special privilege"? And yes, an enlisted man's right to have other enlisted on the jury is absolutely a special privilege, but the military is a stratified, caste-based society with an explicit class system. We're trying to move away from that sort of thing in civil governance. VitalSigns posted:E: If you think peremptory strikes are too important to get rid of then okay, but in the face of evidence that they're used to secretly racially tilt the makeup of juries, we either need to require prosecutors to give a valid reason for every strike, or allow peremptory strikes but give the defense the option to require some minimal racial makeup of the jury. archangelwar posted:Allow independent investigation, follow over the course of a career to detect patterns, make it public - create public pressure to defy patterns, etc.
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Nov 11, 2015 19:10
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Dead Reckoning posted:Your solution to this is, "screw it, let's just make explicit discrimination the law of the land instead."? Explicit discrimination is already the law of the land, though unofficially. Making sure people of color make it onto juries is the opposite of that. Are you against Affirmative Action? quote:You personally being a racist or not is immaterial to how bad and stupid your proposal is. If a south-east Asian immigrant is on trial for rape or honor killing, he gets to insist that his jury include members of his tribe, who no doubt better understand the struggles he's going through to maintain family honor in a godless western society? This would imply that every other member of the jury ignore the law and agree that, yes, honor killings are good. Remember that these juries are instructed to carry out the law, I'm not calling you a racist, but holy poo poo, in what universe does this end up with legal honor killings? If it doesn't, why can't South Asian Muslims be represented in a jury? quote:Leaving the hilarious unworkability aside, do you think there might be bad to abandon the idea that juries are supposed to be neutral finders of facts, rather than a vehicle for expressing citizen sentiment? Because that's what you're doing if you say that someone can't get a fair trial unless they have people from their group judging them. So white people are the only neutral individuals? We can't have other races, otherwise they might poison the well, let a black man rape a white woman due to their race? Or, OR!!! Maybe black members of society are more sympathetic with the idea of "Why was this person stopped in their car in the first place?" due to similar things happening to them, rather than a white person having very little experience of that saying "He had cocaine in his car anyway, what's the difference? He's a criminal." quote:This is literally what prosecutors have to do during a Batson challenge. I guess you're actually OK with the current system then? The whole point behind all this is that Batson doesn't really matter, prosecutors can make up any poo poo to take out black jurors. And the fact that you think people of color, specifically black and hispanic, being tried by all white juries is fair, then why are you so hesitant to make sure other black and hispanic people at least get representation? Isn't the whole idea that it's a jury of our peers? Hell, why don't we just make it illegal for the prosecutors to take out black jurors? The conservatives would freak the gently caress out, but they've already passed the initial interview showing that they are fit for jury. Despite the fact that it will never pass into law, honestly, what's the worst thing that could happen from that law?
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Nov 11, 2015 19:35
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archangelwar posted:Allow independent investigation, follow over the course of a career to detect patterns, make it public - create public pressure to defy patterns, etc. By who? The judges, who have shown minimal interest in giving any teeth to the already existing remedies for racism? Or are we going to create some independent outside body for the purpose of tracking the racial composition of prosecutors' peremptory strike usage? I'm not trying to be that rear end in a top hat who goes "oh, you say there's a problem? then you'd better submit a detailed plan on exactly how it should be solved", but as long as Jarmak and Dead Reckoning are getting called out for saying it's an unsolvable problem, I'd like to see the people calling them out offer up something concrete of their own rather than just slinging barbs, because I think a lot of people are missing one very important point: Dead Reckoning posted:Let me get this straight, so you can't accuse me of misrepresenting your position: trapped mouse posted:The whole point behind all this is that Batson doesn't really matter, prosecutors can make up any poo poo to take out black jurors. Technically, the problem is not that the prosecutor can make up reasons - anyone can make poo poo up, and the judicial system in particular is supposed to be able to handle that. The problem is that the judges are buying those made-up reasons, no matter how flawed or out-of-place or inaccurate or vague they are, and if the defense manages to successfully challenge one of those reasons then the judge just offers the prosecutor a chance to make up a new one. The problem is not that prosecutors are lying or that there is a lack of oversight, the problem is that the existing oversight mechanism is letting prosecutors lie because, for whatever reason, the judges that evaluate those reasons the prosecutors give are not interested in providing real oversight and instead let prosecutors get away with anything they want.
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Nov 11, 2015 20:26
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Main Paineframe posted:Or are we going to create some independent outside body for the purpose of tracking the racial composition of prosecutors' peremptory strike usage? Is there some problem with this that I'm missing? Hell, if we can create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, what stops us from creating a bureau specifically focusing on juries? What about the Bureau of Justice Statistics? They already exist, maybe they can start really, really studying how often prosecutors decide to dismiss black jurors. Put that percentage that they find in big Ariel Bold loving black letters. There's no such thing as separate but equal, so if there's a huge discrepancy, it's a civil rights issue. How is this not a civil rights issue? We're talking about systematic exclusion from a right guaranteed by the goddamn Bill of Rights. Jury of your peers. Trust me, black people don't want murderers on the streets. They don't want rapists. What stops us from actively preventing discrimination against black jurors? We don't have to have racial quotas. But if a person passes the initial interview, make it more difficult to take someone off the jury if they're a person of color. Make it so that there has to be a compelling interest in keeping this juror off the case. Make them write a goddamn essay if they want to. Worst case scenario, prosecutors won't go to the trouble, and maybe we'll have some more equal juries.
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Nov 11, 2015 21:13
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Main Paineframe posted:By who? The judges, who have shown minimal interest in giving any teeth to the already existing remedies for racism? Or are we going to create some independent outside body for the purpose of tracking the racial composition of prosecutors' peremptory strike usage? Yes. The question of whether there is political will to do it is independent of "there is nothing that can be done." quote:Technically, the problem is not that the prosecutor can make up reasons - anyone can make poo poo up, and the judicial system in particular is supposed to be able to handle that. The problem is that the judges are buying those made-up reasons, no matter how flawed or out-of-place or inaccurate or vague they are, and if the defense manages to successfully challenge one of those reasons then the judge just offers the prosecutor a chance to make up a new one. The problem is not that prosecutors are lying or that there is a lack of oversight, the problem is that the existing oversight mechanism is letting prosecutors lie because, for whatever reason, the judges that evaluate those reasons the prosecutors give are not interested in providing real oversight and instead let prosecutors get away with anything they want. Right, but if an evaluation of an attorney shows that over the course of their career they strike minorities for "reasons" that are easily applied (but aren't) to other eligible jurors, then action can be taken. Dead Reckoning posted:So you're going to try publicly shame prosecutors if they don't meet some sort of arbitrary racial quota in their use of peremptory strikes? I see nothing wrong with public outcry over perceived abuse of the judicial system. I said nothing about establishing quotas. Is there something de facto wrong with the idea of public oversight of the criminal justice system?
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Nov 11, 2015 22:57
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Dead Reckoning posted:Being a member of a disadvantaged group does not give you a pass on having to articulate a rational and coherent basis for changes to the law. I think the more important part of my post is the part that points out that it is nigh-impossible to prove that the status quo is the best system possible, yet we have people in this thread claiming that all possible changes would make it worse*. Even if you disagree with every change that people have proposed, the rational conclusion would be "the status quo is still unacceptable and we should continue to search for something that helps to alleviate its problems." Of course, if you're not part of one the demographics harmed by the status quo and lack empathy there isn't really much pressure to seek this change, which is why people are (rightly) assuming the posters who defend the status quo aren't good people. *Their evidence for "make it worse" is usually actually just "would have problems," which isn't a convincing rebuttal in light of the fact that the status quo also has serious problems.
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Nov 11, 2015 23:21
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For readability's sake I'm going to condense all this pearl-clutching into a few points, please let me know if I've misrepresented you. 1) You want discrimination on juries?!?!?! No I don't, but this pearl of your is worthless because it already provably exists and is not going away, and you've already said you're fine with the status quo of discrimination in jury selection continuing until society stops being racist one day. Since you're already okay with prosecutors tilting the racial composition of juries, let's bring it in to the system, confront it with eyes open, and use it to protect the civil rights of the accused rather than subvert them. Ignoring the problem and clinging to neutral wording doesn't get rid of racial quotas, it just shifts the control of them to the unaccountable biases and prejudices of individual prosecutors, which is not conducive to fair and equitable justice. 2) Juries should be neutral finders of fact with no assumptions about race! Again, this is not the case, the assumption that's actually happening in practice isn't one of neutral finders of fact, but one of "black people can't be neutral and must be excluded". Since that's a bad assumption, we should correct that by some method, perhaps by requiring prosecutors to put black people on juries even if they don't want to, although I am open to other suggestions. 3) Are you saying only people of their own ethnic group can judge them, and aren't there too many tiny groups in the world? No, this is the densest possible interpretation of what I said, so no surprise that you chose it. I never said that only Japanese can judge Japanese: the bias that's actually happening is prosecutors assume some ethnic groups can never be trusted to judge and excluding them for that reason. Since my proposal is intended to remedy that specific bias, we don't need to drill down to whether someone is a descendant of slaves or a recent Xhosa immigrant or Chinese or Korean, because prosecutors aren't getting into tiny details like that either. They're relying on broad physical characteristics like "are they too dark", so the US census categories are granular enough for this purpose and we don't have to go searching for 12 people from every tiny tribe, obviously. 4)  Won't those slanty-eyed South Asians impose Sharia law and honor killings on us all?!?!?!?  What the hell. I work with plenty of them here in South Asia and none of my co-workers support honor killings so I think we can trust the usual interview system to weed out any few who do and we don't have to defend Western civilization by banning all shifty Muslim Malays from juries juuuuuuuust yet homes.
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Nov 12, 2015 01:39
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VitalSigns posted:Why not do something similar to what other multiethnic societies do in power-sharing agreements, something like what we already do under the UCMJ by allowing an enlisted defendant to demand that at least one-third of the jury be made up of enlisted servicemembers. This may work in places where there is a sizable minority population, but in cities like mine where the black population is less than 4% and the asian population is barely 1% it wouldn't hold up. You'd essentially have to make those ethnic groups professional jurors to have a large enough pool of ethnic jurors that would be impartial/unbiased in any given case involving one of those minorities as a defendant.
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Nov 12, 2015 06:30
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WorldsStrongestNerd posted:It seems like one of two things are going on This distinction has been raised multiple times so far and I'd just like to make sure everyone understands BOTH these statements can be true. They are not contradictory. An argument that systemic biases disproportionately exclude African-Americans from juries is not an argument that peremptory strikes are not used to disproportionately strike black jurors.
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Nov 12, 2015 06:40
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No you wouldn't, if only 1% of the population is Asian, they're going to make up a comparably small percentage of court cases as defendants as well so there won't be much demand for jurors. In the case where there's only one black guy in the whole town, well that problem already exists, plenty of times a town is too small for a jury, or the defendant too well-known to everyone in town, or media coverage has saturated it until there you can't find anyone without prior knowledge of the case, and we just get the jury from somewhere else. Not being able to find a jury is a well-known common problem with already-established solutions.
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Nov 12, 2015 06:40
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semper wifi posted:"How does giving [class] [special legal privileges, based entirely upon their class membership] create special classes of people who get legal privileges based on skin color?" Why would this rule not be just as easily applicable to people of all census-recognized ethnic groups? It's not a "privilege" if it is applied to everyone.
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Nov 12, 2015 06:56
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Muscle Tracer posted:Why would this rule not be just as easily applicable to people of all census-recognized ethnic groups? It's not a "privilege" if it is applied to everyone. I imagine it's similar to how the Voting Rights Act creates a "racial entitlement" that lets black people block southern states from closing all polling places in black counties. White people don't need to file vra suits so clearly the law is racist.
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Nov 12, 2015 10:05
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archangelwar posted:Yes. The question of whether there is political will to do it is independent of "there is nothing that can be done." Actually, the question of whether anyone is willing to act against racism is pretty loving important. No rule can survive if no one is willing to enforce it. Which is exactly the problem with Batson challenges now! Elected judges. The public is terrible at providing oversight of the judicial branch, and ideally the judicial branch should not be accountable to the general public. Otherwise they might start letting popular demand influence their verdicts, instead of enforcing the law no matter how much h outrage the media gins up.
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Nov 12, 2015 19:58
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Main Paineframe posted:Actually, the question of whether anyone is willing to act against racism is pretty loving important. No rule can survive if no one is willing to enforce it. Which is exactly the problem with Batson challenges now! I'd add elected DAs to that as well
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Nov 12, 2015 20:11
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The trouble with elected judges runs way deeper than just worrying that they'll be subject to the fickle whims of the mob. The situation is worse than that:quote:In "Justice For Sale," FRONTLINE correspondent Bill Moyers examines the impact of campaign cash on the judicial election process and explores the growing concern among judges themselves that campaign donations may be corrupting America's courts. Given the amount of money tied up in keeping Americans incarcerated I would not be surprised if all that business money is, either directly or indirectly, exerting pressure on the justice system to lock up more people.
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Nov 12, 2015 20:11
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