In an order issued today, U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria said that the hand-written notes of prosecutors from a 31-year-old murder case “constitute strong evidence that, in prior decades, prosecutors from the [Alameda County District Attorney’s] office were engaged in a pattern of serious misconduct, automatically excluding Jewish and African American jurors in death penalty cases.”

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240425121138/https://oaklandside.org/2024/04/22/alameda-county-prosecutors-allegedly-excluded-black-people-and-jews-from-death-penalty-juries/

  • @BertramDitore
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    446 months ago

    If you feel you have to exclude certain types of people because you think they might demonstrate too much empathy or compassion, then the system obviously needs more empathy and compassion.

    • @gAlienLifeformOP
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      6 months ago

      When an individual prosecutor shits all over the Constitution’s guarantees of equality before the law, and they take efforts to conceal those actions, that is a knowingly bad act and an individual who deserves some accountability

      When those actions stay covered up for over three decades because nobody in the system bothered to get a second plants at any of this, that’s a system that deserves some accountability

      e; like, I personally am a big proponent of needing more empathy and compassion within our system, thought for the type of person who that argument doesn’t connect with, I think there’s a very strong “We fought a civil war and certified a constitutional amendment to deal with crap like this, don’t reopen this Pandora’s box” argument to be made

  • Flying Squid
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    146 months ago

    The apparent attempts to exclude Black and Jewish people from juries in homicide cases may have been based upon the belief that these groups would be less likely to convict someone if a death sentence was possible.

    It’s almost as if you’re not part of cisgendered, white, Christian, male, heteronormative subsection of society, you see how inherently unjust our so-called justice system is, isn’t it?

    • @Cosmonauticus
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      96 months ago

      Stop leaving out white women. They’re the least likely to be convicted and even when they are they receive the least amount of time when sentenced. They benefit just as much as white men if not more and have been active participants of the injustices of the court system for centuries. You should try asking Emmett Till about his experience with white women and the justice system.

        • @Cosmonauticus
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          26 months ago

          I was referring more to the fact that a white woman was directly responsible for his murder and used a biased court system to avoid punishment

          Racial bias in jury selection is a bigger problem, but gender bias is still a problem.

          Which is why I think it’s disingenuous to exclude white women from your point as they are more likely to be selected for jury duty than anyone else besides a white male

      • @gAlienLifeformOP
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        56 months ago

        have been active participants of the injustices of the court system for centuries

        This much is true and it is important to talk about to keep is from repeating history’s mistakes

        They benefit just as much as white men if not more

        There are countless instances of sexual assault and domestic violence that cops and prosecutors have swept under rugs for decades that argue against that really strongly imo. Being victims of oppression doesn’t excuse participating and upholding oppressive systems, but if we’re going to tell the whole story let’s tell the whole story.