Can some one please explain how this
fits into the picture? WTF does Shakespeare have to do with the case in question?
Color me confused…
Bricker, wring, and others who have pointed out that the judge acted reasonably, given the state of the law. I accept your correction. I ought not to have called him a jerk.
However, there is something jerky about the whole procedure. Actual trials are better than other alternatives, but they do not provide perfect justice. Off the top of my head, I can think of numerous problems – dishonest witnesses, lack of evidence, biased judges, procedures that sometimes require realeasing the guilty, dumb juries, jury nullification, revolving door justice, disproportionate sentences, witness tampering, to name a few.
Avoiding the “G” problem is easily solved, but has no appreciable impact on improving justice. It isn’t wrong to find a better randomizing method, but that’s not really where the problems lie.
In a way I wish Judge Jordan had ruled that this was simply too stupid to worry about, and dared an appellate court to overrule his decision. But, they might well have accepted his dare, so he was probably right to make this change before the actual trial.
Why, there are plenty of non-Hispanic names that begin with G.
Greenberg, Glickstein, Grossman, Goldberg . . . 
I always knew Diana Ross could rule.
Tripler
Right along with the Parliament Funkadelic.
december:
You’re quite right when you suggest that solving the ‘G’ problem is not, standing alone, likely to usher in a new era of mistake-free justice proceedings.
But the general approach can, I think, be characterized as: fix what is easily fixable, and remain reasonably close to what society views as reasonable.
For example, today we all know that evidence obtained through an illegal search cannot be used against the person whose privacy was violated. But it wasn’t until 1961, and a case called Mapp v. Ohio, that the Supreme Court decided that state court trials must follow the same exclusionary rule that the federal courts did. Indeed, even the federal courts didn’t exclude illegally obtained evidence until the early part of the twentieth century (I think the case is Wong Sun v. U.S., or maybe it’s Wong Fu. But I digress).
But this exclusion is based on words that were adopted in 1789, and applied to the states in 1865! In other words, the courts view the protections offered by the Constitution not as a static set, but as a moving line, staying relatively consistent with the expectations of society.
- Rick
let me get this straight. Because there is no way to achieve ‘perfect justice’, your preferred method would be to have the judge ignore/refuse to deal with a tangible, provable, easily fixable problem with jury selection?
My gramma’s (dad’s mom) maiden name is Gerthoffer.
Right.
It’s a question of magnitudes. Some of the problems in my list are IMHO a million times more important than this one. I mean that literally. One could probably find a million defendants who got an unjust result due to some problem with the evidence, but not a single one who got an unjust result because of G’s.
Bricker, I appreciate your legal insights, but I wouldn’t even dignify this with the name “problem.” Devoting any time or energy at all to G-ism is a waste IMHO. Also, it makes the courts look foolish. YMMV
Jeez december get off the ‘g’ rant already. The point the judge was addressing was the apparent internal bias used in the method of jury selection.
A cornerstone of our judicial system is a ‘jury of one’s peers’, and that said jury is fairly selected. You certainly would object to only democrats being allowed to serve, eh? as you should. When the method of selection demonstrates that there’s an unintentional but absolutely viewable bias in the selection process, it’s not a good method.
the judge was absolutely correct in tossing it, and it was fucking important that he do so.
I get to do this twice today:
[GomerPyle] Shazam[/GomerPyle]
My peers cannot be the letter “G”?
I could never get a fair trial, for I have no peers.
Gasp! Warren Court sociological jurisprudence heresy!!
(You’re right, it was Wong Sun)
So, explain to me again why three of the five black women jurors in the pool of 38 were chosen.
They would probably have had the same problem had the letter “R” been drawn. I’d be willing to bet that a majority of the R section of the Miami phone book comes from these 7 names: Ramirez, Ramos, Reyes, Rodriguez, Rios, Rivera, Romero.