-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- 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 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQCVAwUBMwtSiL04kQrCC2kFAQEmrwQAylLGuPHBNqeVij2ll7bnuK2Qn3CCZFTF 0unEYtmWcDxV5YxwyYVVntpujuF0j38/A3XBKKOwkfqt2QibRIKsBq7lkkWjIQvl re2y0q3XE6+/+Iw9gQbeNv2jEBH1fofIOLCKgAOYonjl+TXCMOJC8kJKszmr+QGr uk0yviRPO5c= =wRK0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----