Northgate
Baptist Church
Northgate
Baptist Church
O. J. Simpson
Question --- What Is Your Opinion of The O. J. Simpson Verdict?
Answer
Raced-based verdicts isn't limited to blacks. In past years, all-while juries, particularly in the South, nearly always convicted blacks accused of crimes against white, regardless of the evidence --- while whites who reaped or lynched blacks went free. In death-penalty cases, white jurors frequently refused to send whites to death row for murdering blacks. When Los Angeles police officers charged in the videotaped beating of Rodney King were acquitted in Simi Valley, Calif., in 1992, many observers attributed the verdict to the fact that 10 of the jurors were white and none were black.
It seems that, in protest against past experiences of racism on the part of police and prosecutors, black jurors are Choosing To Disregard The Evidence, however powerful. They seek to protest racial injustice and to refrain from adding to the already large number of blacks behind bars.
The evidence against Davon Neverdon was overwhelming. Four eyewitnesses testified that they saw him kill a man in a robbery attempt. Two others said he told them he committed the crime. Even Mr. Neverdon expected to be convicted. He even offered to plead guilty in exchange for a 40-year sentence. The prosecutor, at the request of the victim's family, rejected the offer. However, the Baltimore jury, which included 11 African-Americans, after 11 hours of deliberation, acquitted the defendant, who is black.
The case of Darryl Smith in 1990 is an even more telling example of how race can affect a criminal trial. After an all-black jury in Washington acquitted Mr. Smith of murder in March 1990, a letter from an anonymous juror arrived a the superior court there. The letter said that while most jurors in the case believed Mr. Smith was guilty, the majority bowed to holdouts who "Didn't Want To Send Anymore Young Black Men To Jail."
In an Atlanta trial last summer, Erick Bozeman openly pleaded with a jury to acquit him of serious federal drug charges because he is black. In his opening statement, he told jurors that the U.S. war on drugs was part of the same war on black people that "has existed in one way or another since African prisoners arrived in 1619 as slaves." He described his birthplace as "the urban war zone of South Central Los Angeles where the real law is money and survival" and his profession as that of a drug middleman, "a broker, just like Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky." The case ended in a hung jury. All the jurors voting to acquit were black. Afterward, Judge Clarence Cooper, who is also black, privately told the jurors he was disappointed with the verdict, and he questioned their common sense.
Other high-profile cases in recent years in which urban juries acquitted black defendants, despite what appeared to be strong evidence for conviction include:
The 1990 case of Washington Mayor Marion Barry, who was acquitted on all but one of 14 counts against him stemming from a sting operation in which the FBI and police Videotaped him smoking crack cocaine.
A large string of acquittals of defendants charged with beating Reginald Denny during the Los Angeles riots in 1992.
The November 1988 Bronx acquittal of Larry Davis on charges of attempting to murder nine police officers. After the verdict, Mr. Davis's lawyer, William Kunstler, acknowledged that there was "no question" but race influenced the jurors. But he said this had led to a just, rather than an unjust, verdict.
Rather than condemn this action, some legal scholars argue that it fits neatly into a tradition of political activism by U.S. juries. Some black lawyers and scholars argue that any defiance of what blacks perceive as a racist system falls within the tradition of so-called Jury Nullification --- the rejection of the law in favor of the jurors' own views of justice. They note that this controversial power, which the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly affirmed 100 years ago, has played an important role at key times in U.S. history --- and may be doing so again today. It might also be noted that the constitutional prohibition against trying a person twice for the same crime protects the defendant in all such circumstances from having an acquittal overturned because the jurors didn't follow the law.
If this is all true, and this is the Attitude of the American people, I can only pray "God Help America!"
A Search For The Truth
