From: "Attila T. Hun" <attila@primenet.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 11:24:26 -0800 (PST)
To: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Subject: Re: Constitution and a Right to Privacy
In-Reply-To: <330B1AC7.9D2@gte.net>
Message-ID: <199702191924.MAA11906@infowest.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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on or about 970219:0722 Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net> said:

+Simple, but....  In a right to jury trial of peers, are the peers the
+peers of the defendant or the peers of the victim?  Both the Rodney
+King officers and the O.J. cases were perfect examples of how, when you
+switch the peer groups, you reverse the decisions.

    you trying to be some kind of trouble maker? please remember that 
    *all* the fairweather dogooder liberals have been telling us for 
    years that everyone is equal.  yeah, right!

    therefore, juries are obviously color blind, and not dazzled by 
    attorneys calling up racism.  yeah, right!

    as to Powell, he is/was an animal who should have been put away 
    permanently. 

    Koon was an officer's officer (personal experience) and was in the 
    wrong place at the wrong time, not willing to step in. Koon lost 24 
    years of service without a mark, his pension, and all his benefits 
    with 5 or 6 kids at home --and they had to go into hiding until 
    found by the liberal press again and again who obviously felt the 
    family should be punished as well.  we wont even bother with the 
    issues of double jeopardy when they pull a federal civil rights 
    trial on all of them after the state court cleared everyone except 
    Powell who they hung on.  they had a clear right to try Powell, 
    noone else.

    and the video played for evidence missed the first 90 seconds when a 
    very large animal (Rodney King can be described no other way) came 
    out of the car, dancing the jig, and went after Powell.  by the time 
    the prosecutors, particularly the Feds, were through itimidating the 
    witnesses, nobody told the truth. 

    Rodney King had been busted for public intoxication, controlled 
    substances, and disorder enough times that he was well recognized 
    for what he was  --and easily identified.

    in the spooks, we called Powell's actions "the red mask" --once you 
    start staring the beast in the eye, you are so wired on there is no 
    stopping until your opponent is jello. 'shocktroops' or 
    'Stossentruppen' should never be used in civilian police forces, 
    except possibily on SWAT teams, not an average street cop.

    and why did we have the trial in the first place? simply because the 
    LA Times and KABC decided there was going to be a trial.  I dont 
    know whether to chalk it off to their bleeding heart liberals, or 
    just the usual greed for money to be made on high profile news.
    or is it just more of the usual politically correct beat down of
    the oppressive whiteface?

    it is sometimes difficult to defend the LA Police department when 
    you knew Daryll Gates and his predecessor, "Big Ed" Davis. Both of
    them are cowboys; Big Ed is now a state senator from the far west 
    Valley, what was horse country when I lived there.  they had a job 
    to do, and LA is a mean place. the city itself is 2/3 poverty, half 
    of that extreme ghetto and barrio problems.

    Big Ed is the man who proposed the fitting ending to airline 
    hijackings, and set up his display in plain sight: in front of
    the American Airlines terminal building 4 at LAX before LAX was 
    double decked.  

    Big Ed parked a 40 ft flat bed trailer out there with a judge's 
    bench at one end and a gallows at the other end with the jury box 
    and dock in between.  yes, sir, justice by the hijackers' peers; 
    take the next 12 citizens coming out the doors.

    perfect and swift justice on someone who has no defense for his 
    actions.

    everything else falls under this short take by a prominent author 
    discussing the problem with jury selection: 

        "The men who murdered Virginia's [Nevada] original twenty-six
    cemetary occupants were never punished.  Why?  Because Alfred the 
    Great, when he invented trial by jury, and knew that he had 
    admirably framed it to secure justice in his age of the world, was 
    not aware that in the nineteenth century the condition of things 
    would be so entirely changed that unless he rose from the grave and
    altered the jury plan to meet the emergency, it would prove the most
    ingenious and infallible agency for defeating justice that
    human wisdom could contrive.  For how could he imagine that we
    simpletons would go on using his jury plan after circumstances had
    stripped it of its usefulness, any more than he could imagine that
    we would go not using his candle clock after we had invented
    chronometers?  In his day news could not travel fast, and hence he
    could easily find a jury of honest, intelligent men who had not
    heard of the case they were called to try - but in our day of
    telegraph and newspapers his plan compels us to swear in juries
    composed of fools and rascals, because the system rigidly excludes
    honest men and men of brains.

    "I remember one of those sorrowful farces, in Virginia, which we 
    call a jury trial.  A noted desperado killed Mr. B, a good citizen, 
    in the most wanton and cold-blooded way.  Of course the papers were 
    full of it, and all men capable of reading read about it.  And of 
    course all men not deaf and dumb and idiotic talked about it.  A jury
    list was made out, and Mr.  B. L., a prominent banker and a valued
    citizen, was questioned precisely as he would have been questioned
    in any court in America:

        "`Have you heard of this homicide?'
        "`Yes.'
        "`Have you held conversations on the subject?'
        "`Yes.'
        "`Have you formed or expressed opinions about it?'
        "`Yes.'
        "`Have you read newspaper accounts of it?'
        "`Yes.'
        "`We do not want you.'

        "A minister, intelligent, esteemed, and greatly respected; a 
    merchant of high character and known probity; a mining 
    superintendent of intelligence and unblemished reputation; a 
    quartz-mill owner of excellent standing, were all questioned in 
    the same way, and all set aside.  Each said the public talk and the
    newspaper reports had not so biased his mind but that sworn
    testimony would overthrow his previously formed opinions and enable
    him to render a verdict without prejudice and in accordance with
    the facts.  But of course such men could not be trusted with the
    case.  Ignoramuses alone could mete out unsullied justice.

        "When the peremptory challenges were all exhausted, a jury of 
    twelve men was empaneled - a jury who swore they had neither heard,
    read, talked about, nor expressed an opinion concerning a murder
    which the very cattle in the corrals, the Indians in the sagebrush,
    and the stones in the streets were cognizant of!  It was a jury
    composed of two desperadoes, two low beerhouse politicians, three
    barkeepers, two ranchers who could not read, and three dull, stupid,
    human donkeys!  It actually came out afterward that one of these
    latter thought that incest and arson were the same thing.  "The
    verdict rendered by this jury was, Not Guilty.  What else could one
    expect?  "The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty,
    and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity, and perjury.  It is a shame
    that we must continue to use a worthless system because it was good
    a thousand years ago.  

        In this age, when a gentleman of high social standing,
    intelligence, and probity swears that the testimony given under
    solemn oath will outweigh, with him, street talk and newspaper
    reports based on mere hearsay, he is worth a hundred jurymen who
    will swear to their own ignorance and stupidity, and justice would
    be far safer in his hands than theirs.  Why could not the jury law
    be so altered as to give men of brains and honesty an equal chance
    with fools and miscreants?  Is it right to show the present
    favoritism to one class of men and inflict a disability on another,
    in a land whose boast is that all its citizens are free and equal?

        I am a candidate for the legislature.  I desire to tamper with 
    the jury law.  I wish to so alter it as to put a premium on
    intelligence and character, and close the jury box against idiots,
    blacklegs, and people who do not read newspapers.  But no doubt I
    shall be defeated - every effort I make to save the country `misses
    fire.'"
            --From "Roughing It" by Mark Twain, Chapter XLVIII.

 _____________________________________________________________________
  "Explain to me, slowly and carefully, 
    why if person A, when screwed over on a deal by B; 
    is morally obligated to consult, pay, and defer to, person C 
    for the purpose of seeing justice done; 
    and why person C has any legitimate gripe,
    if A just hauls off and smacks B around like a dead carp." 

 ___________________________________________________________attila_____
 "attila" 1024/C20B6905/23 D0 FA 7F 6A 8F 60 66 BC AF AE 56 98 C0 D7 B0 

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