Online: | |
Visits: | |
Stories: |
Story Views | |
Now: | |
Last Hour: | |
Last 24 Hours: | |
Total: |
A recent Supreme Court ruling turns criminal justice on its head, putting the jury on trial for political incorrectness and letting the criminals run free. Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado is utter lunacy:
After a Colorado jury convicted a Mexican man of sexual harassment, two jurors signed affidavits that a retired police officer on the jury had expressed racial animus during deliberations. The juror was reported to have stated that “nine times out of 10 Mexican men were guilty of being aggressive toward women and young girls,” among other slurs. The defendant’s counsel sought to overturn the conviction based on racial animus but was denied by the trial judge.
Civilization has been protected from verdicts being retroactively nullified due to alleged flaws of the jurors for centuries, thanks to the no-impeachment rule rooted in English common law.
As Justice Anthony Kennedy explained in the 5-3 majority opinion this week in Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, the rule “promotes full and vigorous discussion by jurors by providing considerable assurance that after being discharged they will not be summoned to recount their deliberations” or otherwise harassed. It also “gives stability and finality to verdicts.”
Yet Justice Kennedy joined the Court’s four liberals in Pena-Rodriguez to overturn that standard for accusations of racial bias.
What exactly constitutes “racial bias” that should result in the verdict being overturned? The Supremes don’t say, guaranteeing endless appeals on grounds of alleged juror political incorrectness.
Presumably it will still be possible to incarcerate white male heterosexual Christian criminals. All other guilty verdicts are likely to be held up indefinitely while the jurors are retroactively investigated for any indication of politically incorrect views.
The ruling is a step toward corrupting juries with political standards based on the progressive obsessions with race, gender and class.
Beyond that, it is a step toward reducing our legal system to a dysfunctional farce.
On a tip from Varla.