Posted on 10/29/2014 7:10:20 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The Constitution of the United States of America, Amendment VI, grants the criminally accused a right to a “speedy and public trial … by an impartial jury in the state and district where the crime shall have been committed.”
The framers of the Constitution included this protection because of the brutal system in England where a person could be thrown into a dungeon without formal charges and tried before the crown without the benefit of a public trial or having people from the community hear the evidence against them.
To remedy this abuse of King George’s government, the newly formed government in America granted its citizens a right to a trial by people in the community.
This 18th century concept was a vast improvement from what had been the plight of the criminally accused.
The system worked fine until the second American Revolution (also known as the Civil War) ended in 1865 with the freeing of the Africans who were enslaved in the US.
Prior to this time, the courts were reserved for Europeans who judged other Europeans. The enslaved Africans were at the mercy of their captors.
The law of the land allowed every enslaver to deal with his captives as he pleased. There was very little if any justice for the enslaved.
After 1865, Africans living in America as citizens were granted access to the courts via Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. If accused of a crime, these new citizens had the protection of the Sixth Amendment.
How that played out in real time is that jury service was reserved for landowners. In the late 18th and much of the 19th centuries, landownership was mostly reserved for white men.
Thus, white men determined the fate of Africans accused of crimes in America for most of their first 100 years of freedom from bondage.
Clearly, the “jury of your peers” enacted in its pristine form by the framers worked when European men judged European men. The empirical data or evidence tended toward guilt or innocence. This is as it should be.
This system became skewered when Africans were brought before the courts. Often they were tried without benefit of other Africans being on the jury, as landownership was reserved for white men.
When white women came into ownership of land -- for instance, through inheritances -- the requirement for jury service was changed from the landed gentry to permit only those who were found on the voter rolls to serve on juries. White women were not allowed to vote until 1920.
For 13 years following the revolution waged by the Southern states, Africans living in America who owned land had access to the voter rolls. Yet, seldom were any called for jury duty.
Thus, criminal justice in America has from Day 1 been a system designed to protect the interest of white men.
Whenever African Americans come before the system, the races of the parties involved have always been the tipping point in deciding which side gets the benefit of the doubt.
For instance, Trayvon Martin does not get the benefit of the doubt that he had a right to walk home without being stalked and baited into fighting by a white man.
Jordan Davis does not get the benefit of the doubt that he had a right to disregard a command to turn his music down without being shot to death by a white man.
In each instance, a white man was the aggressor who initiated the deadly altercation.
The George Zimmerman and Michael Dunn trials are modern-day examples of how justice has played out in American courtrooms for centuries outside the spotlight of media attention.
Countless African Americans have seen this blind-eyed face of justice. They have had no one to stand up for them or anyone shinning a public spotlight on the mockery of justice that the system has presented in place of their right to trial by jury.
This leads me to two questions: 1. Is the jury system broken? 2. Does an 18th century concept in American jurisprudence, trial by jury, have any validity in 21st century America?
Surely, if Americans cannot divorce themselves of racial misconceptions and conditioning -- apparently formed in vitro -- a system designed to judge people who shared the same ethnicities in 1789 cannot survive the dichotomy of race and culture inherent in the new America created in 1865.
Sources:
Constitution of the United States of America
Civil Rights Act of 1866, Section 1981
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/16591400-the-shades-and-sides-of-justice-jurors-education-color-and-navigating-the-law-video
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/16586325-how-can-a-black-juror-not-see-race-in-the-loud-music-trial
Harold Michael Harvey, JD, is the author of the legal thriller “Paper Puzzle,” available at Amazon.
( I picked this version because it seemed to be the least encumbered by ads and other insanity. Oh, the irony! )
After watching OJ and Casey Anthony walk, it is refreshing to see these two trials seem to invoke justice. The author sounds like a lunatic.
Dunn murdered Davis over some dispute about loud music. Dunn was found guilty of 1st degree murder.
Sounds presidential.
Lehrer used it in his act (and recorded it). The Kingston Trio heard it performed by Lehrer at The Hungry I, incorporated it into their own act, recorded it, and had a big hit with it. But Sheldon Harnick—who would later write the lyrics for Fiddler on the Roof, The Apple Tree, She Loves Me!, The Rothschilds, and others wrote it.
I guess it's along the same lines as "Everything is Broken", but kind of a different take.
Jordan Davis does not get the benefit of the doubt that he had a right to disregard a command to turn his music down without being shot to death by a white man.
“In each instance, a white man was the aggressor who initiated the deadly altercation.
The George Zimmerman and Michael Dunn trials are modern-day examples of how justice has played out in American courtrooms for centuries outside the spotlight of media attention.”
Interesting he neglects to mention the difference in the outcome of the trials.
He's a lawyer.
I don’t know. I’m the only PhD that I know that doesn’t flaunt it. But I came to it way to late in life to be impressed with myself. :)
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I read that the presumption in Europe is that the accussed is guilty??
Our legal tradition is inherited from England, so certainly not all of Europe. I believe in France's system you must prove your innocence.
I had a seminar in graduate school with someone who was a Russian prince...but he just put “Mr.” in front of his surname on his syllabus, when he could have put “H.R.H. Prince...”
Let me answer that . . . No!
Not entirely broken, as the Zimmerman case shows. But it is seriously dented, in the sense that jurors are told that they don’t have the discretion that the prosecutor has - which is to treat a violation as serious or as a technicality. If as the author ofThree Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent - Harvey Silverglate (Author), Alan M. Dershowitz (Foreword)argues, anyone can be held to be guilty of something, that is not a minor point.
I prefer our system, even if the occasional OJ or Angela Davis goes free.
A jury of my peers in Miami can't speak my language. :-(
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