{"id":180593,"date":"2017-03-06T21:53:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T02:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/03\/06\/racism-is-bad-8-5-who-cares-3\/"},"modified":"2017-03-06T21:53:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T02:53:00","slug":"racism-is-bad-8-5-who-cares-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/03\/06\/racism-is-bad-8-5-who-cares-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Racism is Bad: 8 5 \u2014 Who Cares: 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court just ruled, with Alito, Roberts, and Thomas dissenting, that a juror making racist comments in during deliberations is misconduct<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A Colorado man who was required to register as a sex offender after being convicted of unlawful sexual contact with two teenage girls will get a shot at a new trial, a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled today. Miguel Pe\u00f1a-Rodriguez had asked a state trial court for a new trial after two jurors told his lawyers that a third juror had made racially biased remarks about Pe\u00f1a-Rodriguez and his main witness, who are both Hispanic. But the state trial court rejected Pe\u00f1a-Rodriguez\u2019s request, citing a state evidentiary rule that generally bars jurors from testifying about statements made during deliberations that might call the verdict into question. In a major ruling on juror bias and fair trials, the Supreme Court reversed that holding by a vote of 5-3 and sent Pe\u00f1a-Rodriguez\u2019s case back to the lower courts for them to consider the two jurors\u2019 testimony for the first time.<\/span>

<\/span>Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court, in a decision joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayo, and Elena Kagan. The court began by acknowledging that Colorado\u2019s \u201cno impeachment\u201d rule \u2013 which mirrors similar rules in the federal system and around the country \u2013 serves important purposes: It allows \u201cfull and vigorous discussions\u201d among jurors, who do not need to worry about later efforts to pry into those deliberations, and it \u201cgives stability and finality to verdicts.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>But those considerations, the court determined, must yield when there is evidence that a juror has relied on racial stereotypes or prejudice to convict a defendant. Racial bias, the court explained, is different and more serious than the concerns that led the court to reject proposed exceptions to the \u201cno impeachment\u201d rule in its earlier cases. Although the prior cases involved behavior that was \u201ctroubling and unacceptable,\u201d the court continued, the conduct in those cases was \u201canomalous,\u201d resulting from \u201ca single jury\u2014or juror\u2014gone off course.\u201d In contrast, racial bias in jury deliberations threatens not only the proceeding in which it occurs but also the administration of justice more broadly.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>The court took pains to emphasize that defendants who allege that a juror was racially biased must meet a high bar. \u201cNot every offhand comment indicating racial bias or hostility will justify setting aside the no-impeachment bar to allow further judicial inquiry,\u201d the court stressed. Instead, the defendant must show \u201cthat one or more jurors made statements exhibiting overt racial bias that cast serious doubt on the fairness and impartiality of the jury\u2019s deliberations and resulting verdict. To qualify,\u201d the court continued, \u201cthe statement must tend to show that racial animus was a significant motivating factor in the juror\u2019s vote to convict.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>Although the court made clear that, as a general rule, trial courts have significant discretion in deciding whether the jurors\u2019 statements are sufficiently serious to warrant further examination, it also left little doubt that Pe\u00f1a-Rodriguez had satisfied the stringent standard it established today. The juror\u2019s statements \u2013 which included saying that, in his experience, \u201cnine times out of ten Mexican men were guilty of being aggressive toward women and young girls,\u201d and that \u201cMexican men had a bravado that caused them to believe they could do whatever they wanted with women\u201d \u2013 were, the court noted, \u201cegregious and unmistakable in their reliance on racial bias.\u201d The juror had not only used \u201ca dangerous racial stereotype to conclude\u201d that Pe\u00f1a-Rodriguez \u201cwas guilty and his alibi witness should not be believed, but he also encouraged other jurors to join him in convicting on that basis.\u201d \u201cWhen jurors disclose an instance of racial bias as serious as the one involved in this case,\u201d the court concluded, \u201cthe law must not wholly disregard its occurrence.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not surprised by the dissents, and I’m sure that Gorsuch, if confirmed to the court, would be on their side as well.<\/p>\n

One of the sacraments of the modern conservative movement is that there is no racism anymore, because Obama was elected President, so they are free to ignore civil rights and voting rights for heavily pigmented people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court just ruled, with Alito, Roberts, and Thomas dissenting, that a juror making racist comments in during deliberations is misconduct: A Colorado man who was required to register as a sex offender after being convicted of unlawful sexual contact with two teenage girls will get a shot at a new trial, a divided …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[506,413,407,398],"class_list":["post-180593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-bigotry","tag-civil-rights","tag-justice","tag-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180593"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}