Re: active practice in America

At 08:45 AM 9/30/96 -0800, you wrote:
>At 11:32 PM -0700 9/29/96, Dale Thorn wrote:

>
>(Legal purists will point out that the second trial was for "Federal civil
>rights violations." Harummphh. What would the Founders think of this logic:

I am sure you know the reason for the 'civil rights violation laws.

In the 50's & early 60's, all while jury's in the deep south refusing to
convict obviously guilty white defendants of rape and  murder against blacks.

What would be *your* remedy in such cases.

At 2:42 PM -0400 9/30/96, Marc J. Wohler wrote:
>At 08:45 AM 9/30/96 -0800, you wrote:

>>
>>(Legal purists will point out that the second trial was for "Federal civil
>>rights violations." Harummphh. What would the Founders think of this logic:
>
>I am sure you know the reason for the 'civil rights violation laws.
>
>In the 50's & early 60's, all while jury's in the deep south refusing to
>convict obviously guilty white defendants of rape and  murder against blacks.
>
>What would be *your* remedy in such cases.

Certainly not throwing out the principle of double jeopardy, that a man
should only be tried once for the same alleged crime. As for my "remedy,"
not all injustices can be righted.

(The O.J. trial was a case of a mostly-black jury refusing to convict an
obviously guilty black defendant....and yet I don't hear calls for a
_second_ criminal trial.)

As for the historical reasons for the "conspiracy to not take seriously the
civil rights of an aggrieved minority" nonsense, isn't it about time to
roll back such laws? Whatever the putative justification for such things
might have been 30-40 years ago, this is now, that was then.

--Tim May


We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
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Marc J. Wohler wrote:
> At 08:45 AM 9/30/96 -0800, you wrote:
> >At 11:32 PM -0700 9/29/96, Dale Thorn wrote:
> >(Legal purists will point out that the second trial was for "Federal civil
> >rights violations." Harummphh. What would the Founders think of this logic:

> I am sure you know the reason for the 'civil rights violation laws.
> In the 50's & early 60's, all while jury's in the deep south refusing to
> convict obviously guilty white defendants of rape and  murder against blacks.
> What would be *your* remedy in such cases.

I'm glad you asked.  I wouldn't pretend to have *the* answer, but rather 
than screw around with basic Constitutional enumerations, I think the 
"authorities" should have had the guts to challenge those cases (at 
least the most obvious ones at first, to get the ball rolling), by 
investigating and declaring mistrials based on some kind of jury 
manipulation which showed bad faith on the part of the locals.

If they had the guts to do that, rather than cop out to people's 
*democratic* emotions (the easy way out), we'd be a lot better off.
BTW, this applies to a helluva lot of bad law, terrorist for one.