re: Deputies arrest 4 in LSU student Madison Brooks case

quote:

---

I do think it will be interesting if the certain members of a future jury are put in this case.

---

Finally, someone sees how this case is going to play out.

And you can pretty much take it to the bank that “certain members“ will dominate this jury. Thanks to Batson and the public racial spectacle this case has already become, there's just no way around it.

(no message)

quote:

---

Batson

---

Explain Batson to me.

Spot on!

quote:

---

Proximo

---

I think you are probably right if the lab tests hold.

quote:

---

However, to draw the parallel to this case since I assume what you're trying to go with is that one of the perps is a minor,

---

First, that wasn’t really my point. I could’ve easily have been 18 for the point of the story. However, I was actually 17 when it happened.

Under today’s laws, anyone (other than a teacher with a student) of any age can have sex with a 17-year-old in Louisiana. You can’t serve them a drink, but you can have sex with them.

There was a case a few years back where some guy brought two 17 year old girls back to his boat in Slidell. He had sex with him and took nude pictures of them as they willingly posed. There was nothing wrong with his having sex with them and he wasn’t charged with that. But he was charged with and went to Angola for producing underage pornographic material. Think about the absurdity of that.

Further, at the time these events to place, there was no law against having underage sex with a male of any age in Louisiana.

Getting back to my story -- my point was that the law as it stands is extremely hazardous. People have debated this on this board ad nauseam, Why is it that the girl is the only party this law applies to, especially when both of the parties are drunk. There are a mainstream Democrats out there who say that if a drunk girl says yes to sex one night but wakes up the next day and regrets having sex because she really didn’t want to, and she wouldn’t have had sex with that guy if she was sober, it doesn't matter if the guy was also drunk -- he's guilty of rape. I don’t buy it .

We don’t know if the 17-year-old was drunk or how drunk he was. As far as we know, he hasn’t given a statement. But let’s say he could have blown a .3. And let’s say that the tape reveals she seemed okay with having sex with a 17-year-old and knew what was going on. Is he still guilty of rape because she had a .32 BAC?

If you really want to read about one of the most egregious cases, look up the Amherst rape case.

Still waiting on your explication of Batson, learned scholar.

Do you really want to get into the intricacies of Batson?

Yeah, I’m not going play that game.

The practical result of Batson is that a prosecutor better have a damn good non-racial reason for using a peremptory on a minority. Technically, it should apply to both the prosecution and defense as it’s not really the right of a defendant to have black jurors on his jury, but it’s the right of the juror to actually serve on the jury. Of course, that’s more theory than reality.

Edmonson applied the same concept to civil jury trials. Having said that, it’s mainly applied to prosecutors in criminal trials.

I've never seen a case with respect to a white juror where defense counsel tries to get an all black jury, but I would love to see that case. It would seem that Batson and Edmonton should also be applied to white jurors who are excluded strictly because of their race.


Having said all of that, there are some cases where I think it’s malpractice not to take race as a major consideration in picking a jury. Certainly social economic upbringing also plays into it. However, if you’re were representing O.J. or Marion Barry in his D.C. crack case, you had better try to get the blackest jury you could possibly get. On the other hand, if you’re representing the cops who beat Rodney King, you better try to get the whitist lower-middle class jury you can possibly get.

(no message)