Senate "Race" Relations (was "U.S. Society and Black Men")

Compared to his segments on TDL rather than his hosting, Noah isn't as enjoyable. I just don't think he's funny enough to sustain an entire show the way Stewart was.

 

What you said about voting, Trump winning and BLM.
My dad believes the same thing and hasn't stopped telling me this for weeks

 

Or maybe it was the fact that a lot of white women are Republicans?

 

We all know what people like them think. There is no acceptable way to call attention to injustice. Those protesters should just shut up because...patriotism!

 

McWhorter for Time: "The Difference between Racial Bias and White Supremacy"

We've talked in here before about bias and how it differs from institutional racism/white supremacy. This is an important discussion that needs to be had in our society lest real racism is obscured beneath all this still important, but not serious racist/supremacist, behavior.

A quote:

To use “white supremacy” as a battering ram is, in the end, as uncivilized as anything offensive to liberals scrawled on a wall or spewed into a comments section. Criticism? Of course. Recreational abuse? One is to rise above it.

http://time.com/4584161/white-supremacy/?xid=time_socialflow_twitter

 

Is this really even a problem? I have yet to hear a Democratic senator accuse someone like John McCain of being a white supremacist, whereas by contrast I hear plenty of Republican lawmakers making all sorts of hysterical and defamatory comments about Obama all the time.

 

If you read the article, he's talking mostly about academia, not politicians.

 

Me:


As we all know Ted Bundy acted as his own counsel and it did not help him. At all. So it is strange and stupid that Roof will apparently represent himself.

If Roof has any common sense he would just try and make a plea deal to get LWOP and avoid the death penalty.

 

Mall of America hires it's first back Santa.

 

I'm awaiting the outcry from the "alt-Right" (Nazi's) about making Christmas PC and that white jebus wouldn't agree etc...

 

Is there a white? How about an Asian? I demand a Navajo Santa as well!

Jokes aside this doesn't bother me since Santa died like 1,000 years ago. He was some rich guy who gave $ to the poor so they can get married.

 

So evidently there is one hold out juror in the Slager trial, and the other 11 jurors want to convict. They have been sending notes to the judge trying to get this hold out excluded from the jury, on grounds that he shouldn't have been on this jury.

Sounds like they have one juror who is the type who just doesn't believe cops can murder someone. This is such a cut and dried case, of all the cases. Sounds like 11 jurors agreed. But it will likely be a mistrial anyway.

Our unanimous jury system is insane.

 

When deciding something as serious as murder, the bar should be set very high. Considering all the black men who get convicted under this system, lowering the standard would be worse and result in more incarcerations.

As much as I hate some verdicts, the system is better with the higher standards to convict.

 

....

 

We recently threw out a charge because no evidence of the device was found & when the case ended this "hanging" prosecutor berated us.

The suspect was spared the charge by 1 vote!

1 vote can matter!

 

I believe other counties have systems where you need something like ten people to agree. That's still a high threshold. At least I think 11 should be sufficient. Our current system is far too susceptible to one rogue juror holding out. This is not justice.

 

But then you have systems where you face no jury at all. Only a judge or a tribunal.

No system is perfect.

 

No, but there is demonstrably something wrong with a system where a cop can't get convicted for shooting an unarmed man in the back multiple times as he runs away harmlessly, even when there's video evidence and several witnesses, solely because one guy probably shouldn't have been on the jury. That sort of high profile acquittal rarely seems to happen in places like, say, the UK.

Essentially, our system has become one in which all the defense has to do is target one or two jurors who are probably lying about their ability to be fair. People who shouldn't be on the jury. And then they can get people off who shouldn't be acquitted or get a mistrial.

Look, it is rare that 11 people of various backgrounds on a jury would unanimously tell a judge, "this one juror is not following the guidelines for conviction and he should be replaced with an alternate." In a rare case where this does happen, there ought to be a fail safe.

I'm just saying I think we should have a system where it's possible to render a verdict with 11 votes if the judge deems that twelfth person is not following the guidelines but is just trying to go rogue. The judge's experience and evaluation of the evidence should count in that scenario.

And this shouldn't just apply to convictions. It should also apply to acquittals. There just ought to be some safeguard against the defense or prosecution either one being able to manipulate a single person who is not actually following the legal guidelines.

 

You mentioned the UK. The reason it dosent happen alot there is because guns are harder to get.

 

Are you a judge/attorney DB?

 

The mode of murder is irrelevant. The fact is that in general in the UK, regardless of the charges, the justice process is much more swift, less easy to buy your way out of, and in my opinion, generally more fair.

Maybe, maybe part of the reason for all that is that sentences are lighter in the UK. So convicting a cop of murder in this type of situation may be more fair because you won't get jury members who are skittish to hand out life without parole.

But partly it's a symptom of the fact that in the US, acquittals can be bought. Good jury selection can be purchased. The justice system is big business, rather than simply being a system interested primarily in swift and fair justice (this is also how innocent less rich people wind up spending more than a year in jail awaiting trial for crimes they may not have committed. As I said, our system is bad for innocent people as well).

But I need to look into it more, because I do believe you also don't need a unanimous vote in the UK.

EDIT:

Okay yes, I was right. Since the 70s in the UK, you just need a 10-2 decision and a judge's agreement to render a verdict in criminal cases. This was done to prevent jury tampering or rogue jurors who refuse to follow the actual legal guidelines.

I believe this is the more fair way to do it. There are many, many reasons the UK justice system could teach the US system a lot about fair trials and sentencing. (And investigation: their cops have for over ten years now been forbidden from lying to suspects, which has actually led to a greater confidence in evidence and higher conviction rate for those who are clearly guilty.) This is just one of them, IMHO.

 

maybe of interest