Sunday, September 09, 2012

KWAME KILPATRICK: Just playing the system...



We have a very interesting situation here in Detroit dealing with the trial of our former mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, his father and a friend in federal court on numerous charges including racketeering.

The situation, which I have talked about before, involves seating a jury and race.

Kilpatrick is claiming he cannot get a fair trial in Detroit because he demands to be triad by a jury of his peers, as stipulated by law, which he equates to a jury of blacks knowing full well that in Detroit, blacks do not want to serve on juries for a variety of legitimate and illegitimate reasons.

To me, one’s peers are people who reside in the same district you reside in or at least in the district your crime was committed in. It does not mean that if I was on trial, I could demand to be tried by only Polish-Americans or Asians by Asians, etc. but I do agree that a jury should reflect the general makeup of the surrounding population.

On the other hand, I have been noticing a trend in trial juries where a lone black juror would not convict even if presented with undeniable evidence for conviction. This lone juror holdout phenomenon has happened on a number of occasions most recently in the trial of Kilpatrick’s buddy in crime; a mistrial was called and a new trial scheduled…a huge waste of time and money / our money.

This phenomenon has now been recognized and picked up by the papers and the prosecution.

The dilemma is how to seat black jurors as part of an attempt to seat more diverse juries and yet how to prevent the seating of that one black juror who’s only purpose is to get a mistrial by holding out against conviction.

The judge in this case is trying a different tactic by withholding all information about individual jurors; hoping that the jurors cannot be compromised beforehand by the Kilpatrick team.

Kilpatrick is very cocky these days because he knows he has the legal system in a bind and is pretty sure he will get acquitted one way or another.

I find this situation very interesting from a legal standpoint but also from a head scratching point knowing that a corrupt ex mayor who robbed the city blind can declare poverty to the extent that he cannot seem to pay $200 a month in restitution to the city and therefore gets us, the taxpayers, to fund his very expensive defense team but manages to dress in a new $1,000+ suit every day…only in Detroit.

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