Judging the Jury
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Miles Harvey Utne Reader Online
But as Philip H. Corboy notes in the Chicago Tribune
(Oct. 10, 1995), 'Ironically, suppression of that glove might have
prevented the prosecution from becoming its own worst enemy.' Had
Ito ruled for the defense, the bigoted and corrupt Fuhrman never
would have become the state's star witness.
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Indeed, writes Matthew Cooper in The New Republic (Oct.
23, 1995), 'the biggest reforms ought to be aimed at the police,
not juries. That Mark Fuhrman should have been banished from the
Los Angeles Police Department is, by now, a clich?; what's less
remarked upon is that rogue cops seem to have insinuated themselves
into too many American police forces.'
And as Randall Kennedy points out in California Lawyer
(Nov. 1994): 'To more credibly condemn defense attorneys who
opportunistically play 'the race card' on behalf of black clients,
we must prevent law enforcement authorities from depriving anyone
of equal protection under the law.'
Kennedy, a professor at Harvard Law School, condemns as
'dangerous' and 'prevalent' the conduct of black-dominated juries
who refuse on principle to send fellow African-Americans to jail.
This practice -- wherein jurors base their decisions on variables
other than the evidence and instructions of the judge -- is known
as 'jury nullification.' But, as Kennedy observes, 'it is crucial
to recognize that at least part of the impulse behind jury
nullification stems from legitimate grievances.'
And not all experts believe that jury nullification is
inherently bad. While conceding that the practice is often abused,
Jeffrey Abramson -- a professor of politics at Brandeis University
and author of We, the Jury (BasicBooks, 1994) -- points out
that it is nonetheless a 'time-honored way of permitting juries to
leaven the law with leniency... Putting pressure on jurors to
convict against their conscience would seem to threaten the
integrity of law far more seriously.'
Abramson, writing in the Report from the Institute for
Philosophy & Public Policy (Summer/Fall 1994), concludes:
'The distrust of jury nullification is a succinct expression of the
collapsed faith in the virtue of jurors... One is left to wonder
whether the rejection of jury nullification is not a
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