Venue changes can engineer juries that acquit police of racial killings
Evidence
The murder trial of the policemen was moved to Albany in upstate New York nominally to escape the glare of New York City publicity, a move that substantially provided an almost all-white, female, completely middle-class jury. The police were acquitted of homicide, even dereliction of duty or reckless endangerment. The jury must have considered the more or less indiscriminate police firing of their guns as Diallo deliberately reached for his wallet a rational response ~ an instance of rational discrimination ~ in the face of standard stereotypes of black criminality. — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 82
Categorization
- XREF: Complements the systemic account of how ‘neutral’ legal procedure (venue, jury composition) reproduces racial outcomes. — connects to: Racial framing decides which killers get mythologized versus executed by police
- SEED: Angle: how mundane procedural rules (venue transfer, jury selection) do more racial work than overt doctrine ever could.