Blawg Review 143by Gideon at Public Defender Stuff honors the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King in exemplary fashion.  When you’re in this business,  there “is much in Dr. King’s message that resonates even today within the criminal defense community.”

But on a day to remember the influence Dr. King had on America, there’s a discordant note.  As brought to our attention by Defending People, a post rife with the legacy of discrimination appeared at a prosecutor’s blog in an attempt to explain yet more discrimination against blacks.  Remarkably, there is neither apology nor recognition of the inherent racism it promotes. 

At Harris County Prosecutors blog, where a prosecutor posts anonymously to avoid any personal responsibility, there is a shocking effort made to justify why they try to bump blacks off juries while claiming that they aren’t racist. 

Prosecutors are very much aware of the fact that probably every African-American member of a jury panel has been treated like crap at some point during his or her life by a member of law enforcement, or perhaps even a District Attorney’s office

This isn’t offered as an apology, but rather as an explanation.  It doesn’t occur to the writer that this reflects a fundamental problem, such as why “every” black on the jury has “been treated like crap.”  Some people would stop right there and say, “so the solution to your problem is to stop treating black people like crap.”  Not this prosecutor, who apparently take it as a given that black people will always be treated like crap because that’s the way it is and the way it should be.

Now this post was just written this past Saturday.  Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, a mere 39 years ago.  His work was clearly not finished.  But this Harris County prosecutor, 39 years after the murder of Dr. King, doesn’t even get the idea that treating people this way is a problem.

From this acknowledge of reality, our anonymous prosecutor argues that this is a sound reason to keep blacks off the jury:

A potential juror who is going to let their bad experience with law enforcement shape their verdict shouldn’t be on a jury, regardless of their race. I think prosecutors are very aware of the fact that in dealing with an African-American potential juror.

What is amazing is the apparent sincerity of this statement, oblivious to the basic purpose of a jury and the inherent racism in the argument. 

The jury exists to reflect the community, for better or worse.  The prosecutor wants members of an entire race, who are treated like crap, off the jury because they can’t “be fair” to the prosecution.  So the alternative can be expressed in two alternate ways.

The prosecutor wants only people on the jury who have had good, pleasant, happy experiences with police, because jurors inclined to like police witnesses are “fair”.  Or

The prosecutor wants a jury that hasn’t suffered at the hands of police, inclined to treat them like crap, so that they will accept the police testimony about how they would never beat, shoot, and lie about defendants.  We certainly can’t have a “fair” jury whose life experience might suggest otherwise, now could we?

Nowhere does this prosecutor consider the possibility that neither police nor prosecutors are entitled to a free pass from their racist treatment of blacks in order to have a jury made up only of their favored race.  The jury is intended to reflect the community, for better or worse.  That a significant segment of the  community has been treated by them like crap is a problem of their own making, and they are not entitled to hide from the product of their own racism.

It is not merely sad that this still remains the mindset of those who sincerely believe they are doing the right thing by trying to exclude an entire race from the jury, it is an affront to all of us who believe that racism is inexcusable.  Where is Martin Luther King today?  Hopefully, he’s in Harris County, trying to make our anonymous prosecutor understand the problem better.