Institutional Racism and Trial by a Jury of your peers

[Laika]

I looked up the Black Panther Party on Wikipedia. I took a look at their Ten-point programme and saw this:

9. We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their Black Communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

This idea was also used by the Red Guards Party for Asian Americans as they modeled themselves on the Black Panthers:

7. We want all Yellow People when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their Yellow communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States. We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that Yellow people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the Yellow community from which the Yellow defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by juries that have no understanding of the “average reasoning man of the Yellow community.”

Here is section 1 (of 5) of the 14th Amendment of the United States:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

I think it is an "intresting" interpretation of the Amendment and I'm both appauled and intrigued at whether this would have any effect on the institutional racism of the legal system and whether it would make juries less or more biased or accurate in their judgements.

As legal equality is not the same as social or racial equality, could this work as a way to address racial imbalances in sentencing or would it make things a whole lot worse? Thoughts?

 

[Ultimatum]

You can't measure racial sentencing as you could otherwise. This shouldn't make a difference.
All this would do is introduce outrage and anger.

 

[Kirran]

I'm against this, because it would encourage ideas of separation, and what the hell do we do with that one criminal who was born in America to a British mother whose parents were Black Jamaican and Han Chinese and an Indian father whose parents were White British and Bengali?

 

[Revoltingest]

The Constitution doesn't say we get a trial by a jury "of peers".
The 6th Amendment....
"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."

The "jury of peers" dates back to the Magna Carta, & refers to fellow citizens.
http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-procedure/what-is-a-jury-of-peers.html

But it gets more complicated.
The USSC, under the Petty Offense Doctrine, has ruled that government can by fiat deny us a jury trial in some cases (at their continuing discretion).
This illegal seizing of power is something we continue to fight.
http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/harrisonvus.pdf

 

[Marisa]

They are interpreting "peers" wrong. We're all humans, some of us are just differently pigmented.

 

[George-ananda]

Sounds like the Black Panthers wanted segregation in many ways. Legally classifying people and treating them differently. Is that what we want?

 

[YmirGF]

So, we should use clearly racist solutions to combat racism? That is farking brilliant. *sigh*

To an alternative urban entrepreneur (aka drug-dealer) we need to enlist a jury of alternative urban entrepreneurs (drug-dealers) to make sure he/she/it is not railroaded? Seriously?