Replies

From the N & O:

Jason Scully-Clemmons, an assistant district attorney before entering private practice last year, said an obvious key difference between the lacrosse case and the famous California trial is that the races of the accused and the alleged victim are reversed, blunting any accusation the white police officers were prejudiced against those they were investigating. However, media reports may influence potential jurors to be skeptical of the professionalism of the detectives at the center of the prosecution's case, he said.

True, the races are reversed but the police officers prejudice may also include a hatred of Yankees. The racial slurs hurled at the line cook tarnish the PO's badges but their are other aspects to their behavior; drunkenness, anger, intimidation, aggressiveness, bullying, etc. This will not play well given the appearance of witness intimidation but the LAX investigators.

Dean of the Duke University Law School
(Is this why they are all so silent??)

bartlett@law.duke.edu

Katharine T. Bartlett, A. Kenneth Pye Professor of Law, became Dean of the Law School on January 1, 2000. She teaches family law, gender and law, and contracts. She has written and lectured extensively on topics in family law, including child custody and non-traditional families. Her article on non-exclusive parenthood published in the Virginia Law Review in 1984 is a classic on issues of parenthood when the law's premise of the nuclear family has failed.

(SNIP)

Dean Bartlett is also an expert in the law as it relates to women and has published articles in gender theory, employment law, theories of social change, and legal education. Her article on feminist legal methods, published in the Harvard Law Review in 1990, is one of the most often cited law review articles on any subject. She is the author of Gender and Law: Theory, Doctrine, Commentary (Aspen, 4th ed. 2006) (with Deborah Rhode), and a reader, Feminist Legal Theory: Readings in Law and Gender (Westview 1991) (with Rosanne Kennedy).

As far as the female former ADA comments,

But, we are always told how those slurs reveal the character of someone. We are always told, by the media, how you don't speak like that unless it's a part of your personality and your vocabulary.

Notice, how none of the articles treat the use of these slurs like Finnerty was treated. In fact, with Finnerty, the papers applied an analysis to him - they were HOMOPHOBIC comments. However, no one has said explicitly (in MSM) what this says about the Police officer or officers.

The Defense will argue that it indicates:

1) They use bad judgement

2) When exercising that bad judgement, they have no problem breaking the law.

1 & 2 don't bode well for someone that is supposed to be collecting evidence and investigating a crime that carries a 20 year sentence.

Who among us would want someone prone to use bad judgement and cross the law investigating a loved one in a very serious felony?