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From: jpexg@mit-hermes.ARPA (John Purbrick)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.flame
Subject: Re: Re: Blacks removed from juries
Message-ID: <2473@mit-hermes.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 10-Sep-85 12:39:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-herm.2473
Posted: Tue Sep 10 12:39:18 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 12-Sep-85 11:11:42 EDT
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Organization: The MIT AI Lab, Cambridge, MA
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Xref: watmath net.politics:10916 net.flame:11893

In a Boston-area case a few years ago, a group of black men was accused
and convicted of murdering a Harvard student of Italian descent. (Basically,
the football team was out slumming and got into a brawl.) The defendants
won a new trial (and most of them were aquitted) after they were able to 
show that the prosecution had excluded blacks from the jury. But they 
gave considerably less emphasis to the fact that the defendants' lawyers
had challenged all jurors with Italian names. A rotten system, no?

I'd love to hear of a potential juror refusing to answer questions related
to personal background on the grounds that jury-selection consultants
were in the business of distorting the justice system, and challenging
the judge to accuse him/her of contempt. Is a juror forced to participate
in this kind of farce?