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- #41
Any excuse will do, lawyers know if they can get an ALL WHITE jury 10 times out of 10 their client walks.Oh, wait....An all-white jury has been seated for a second time to decide the fate of white St. Louis police officers accused of assaulting a Black colleague who was working undercover as a protester in 2017.
Defense attorney Scott Rosenblum successfully argued the lone Black man who made it to the final panel should be dismissed because he has a cousin who is incarcerated and is still in touch with his cousin’s mother. He added the government routinely uses incarcerated loved ones as a reason to strike jurors from panels involving Black defendants.
Anyone want to place any bets on how this trial will turn out.
There WAS a Batson Challenge:
"First Assistant U.S. Attorney Carrie Costantin invoked what’s known as a Batson challenge – forcing the defense to provide a race-neutral reason for striking the juror, saying this trial involves a racial component because the accused officers are white and the victim is Black. She also argued the potential juror’s cousin was convicted in 1996, so enough time has passed for the juror to remain impartial.
"Judge E. Richard Webber denied the challenge."
I guess Judge Webber didn't find the reason for the strike to be solely motivated by race. Having a cousin still in jail was a reason to believe that the juror could not be impartial. Webber's probably a white supremacist, right, Super?