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контрольная работа: an the paragraph about the reverse bias in the courtroom and its historical roots to answer the questions below. 1. According to the article, what ethnic groups are susceptible to a race-based bias? 2. What is the current trend in American courtrooms in respect of race trials? No one doubts that black jurors decide cases fairly and appropriately, based on the evidence. Or that black and other minorities are not alone in being susceptible to a race-based bias. Yet interviews with prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and jurors reveal that race is playing a new, troubl
2015
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295-09-15
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Ex.
Ex. 1B. Scan the paragraph about the reverse bias in the courtroom and its historical roots to answer the questions below.
1. According to the article, what ethnic groups are susceptible to a race-based bias?
2. What is the current trend in Americancourtrooms in respect of race trials?
3. What is the prevailing attitude toward the judicial system among the black people in the South?
4. What are the historic roots for some of distrust of the judicial system by many black people today?
5. How long did it take an all-white jury to acquit the two suspects in the 1955 murder case?
6. What practice is defined as ‘jury nullification”? Howcommonisit?
7. In what U.S. cities are jurors known to side with minority defendants in felony trials?
8. What case was heard in Hartford?
9. How strong were the material evidence and eye-witness testimony?
10. Why did the jurors found themselves deadlocked?
11. How did Kevin Hansley account for his refusal to deliberate?
12. What arguments does Paul Butler put forward in support/favor of jury nullification?
13. How does the legal community feel about Butler’s proposal?
14. What are the three ways to do away with the jury nullification and racism in the court room?
No one doubts that black jurors decide cases fairly and appropriately, based on the evidence. Or that black and other minorities are not alone in being susceptible to a race-based bias. Yet interviews with prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and jurors reveal that race is playing a new, troubling role in our courtrooms. Says Richmond, Va., chief prosecuting attorney David Hicks, who is black, “There is a general skepticism of the judicial system by many black people today.”
There are historic roots for some of this distrust. In the past and especially in the South, all-white juries often acquitted white defendants who had committed crimes against blacks.
One of the most notorious cases occurred in August 1955. A rumor spread through tiny Money, Miss., that a black 14-year-old named Emmett Till had spoken to a white woman in a store. Two weeks later Till’s shot and savagely beaten body was dragged from the Tallahatchie River. Arrested reluctantly by local police, the woman’s husband and his half-brother confessed to beating Till but denied killing him. An all-white jury acquitted them in an hour. The verdict shocked the world.
The irony is that today some black jurors are engaging in the very tactic once used against them – ignoring the evidence and deciding the case on some other criteria. Referred to as “jury nullification”, this practice “is a taboo subject,” says attorney Myles H. Malman, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney and chief federal prosecutor. “People don’t want to talk about it. But it’s important that we do.”
In Washington, D.C., where a high percentage of defendants and approximately 70 percent of jurors are black, 24 percent of all felony trials ended in acquittals last year, much higher than the national acquittal rate of 15 percent for all races. In the Bronx in New York City, where more than seven of ten jurors are black or Hispanic, almost half of all minority defendants in felony cases go free. Even where there is overwhelming evidence of guilt, experts s The irony is that today some black jurors are engaging in the very tactic once used against them – ignoring the evidence and deciding the case on some other criteria. ay, many black jurors side with minority defendants against what they see as a white-controlled justice system.
Last October in Hartford, Conn. – shortly after the racially charged acquittal of O.J. Simpson – a jury of five whites and one black began hearing testimony in an armed robbery and assault trial.
The material evidence and eyewitness testimony were strong. Since the holdup men didn’t cover their faces, Southington gas-station attendant Randy Spaulding got a close-up look as they held a knife to his neck. He identified the defendants, Carlos Ayala and Iran Torres. Also, the patrolman who stopped their car within minutes of the robbery – after its make and color had been reported by Spaulding – witnessed them throwing money out the driver’s-side window. Recovered, it totaled $211, the amount stolen from the gas station.
Three days after the jurors began deliberating, they found themselves deadlocked, 5-1. Jurors interviewed by Reader’s Digest say that despite inconsistencies in the police testimony, the evidence was more than enough to convict. But when they attempted to go over the evidence, the black foreman, Kevin Hansley, a 27-year-old computer programmer, told them that the police had lied and that nothing would change his mind. Says juror Barbara Bradley, a 52-year-old assistant bank-loan administrator: “We were all dumbfounded. None of us expected this. He just refused to deliberate. It was very frustrating.” A 58-year-old female juror says, “He believed the police were racially motivated, and nothing else mattered to him.” Hansley denies this, saying that discrepancies in police testimony raised a reasonable doubt in his mind.
Other numerous cases make it apparent that jury nullification is undermining our system of justice. But it’s not only defense attorneys who encourage jury nullification; one black scholar now openly advocates it. Paul Butler, a criminal-law professor at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., argues that with a third of young black men in jail or under court supervision, black jurors have a “moral responsibility to emancipate some guilty black outlaws.” He writes, “The black community rather than go to prison.”
Many in the legal community call his proposal reckless. “The reality is that nonviolent offenders, and especially drug dealers, have devastated inner-city communities,” says U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Eric J. Holder, who is black. “Putting them back on the street will only continue the downward spiral.”
Racism has no place in the courtroom. Here are three ways we can better ensure that it disappears:
1. Majority verdicts. Hung juries clog the court system and cost tax-payers millions of dollars. In Louisiana and Oregon, agreement by at least ten of 12 jurors is sufficient to reach a verdict in most felony trials. “It allows dissent without throwing the whole system into gridlock,” says Michael Schrunk, district attorney for Multomah County, Oregon, which includes Portland.
2. Peremptory challenges. These allows a specific number of jurors to be eliminated (it varies from state to state) without giving a reason. Such challenges are supposed to guarantee fair juries, but in practice lawyers simply use them to craft juries that will be most favorable to their side. Such handpicked juries can be a catastrophe for impartial justice. Says Stephen J. Adler, author of The Jury: Disorder in the Court, “Juries should be a microcosm of their own community rather than a strategic concoction by lawyers trying to win their case”.
3. Mandatory jury service. Nationwide, about 60 percent of people receiving a jury summons simply never show up, for a variety of reasons. Of the 40 percent who do appear, still more are excused or exempt for other causes. In the end only about 25 of every 100 potential jurors end up in the jury pool. But jurors are the centerpiece of a fair and equal justice system. We need to share the duty among all our citizens.
Concludes Charles J.Ogletree, Jr., a black professor at Harvard Law School and director of its Criminal Justice Insitute: “The central tenet of our jury system is that decisions are made without bias, fear or favor. If there’s one thing we cannot tolerate, it is to go back to the dark days when judgements were made on the basis of race rather than reason.”
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