57. Against the Lisbon earthquake
From a Supreme Court opinion:
A Dallas County district judge testified that, when he had served in the District Attorney's Office from the late-1950's to early-1960's, his superior warned him that he would be fired if he permitted any African-Americans to serve on a jury. Similarly, another Dallas County district judge and former assistant district attorney from 1976 to 1978 testified that he believed the office had a systematic policy of excluding African-Americans from juries.
Of more importance, the defense presented evidence that the District Attorney's Office had adopted a formal policy to exclude minorities from jury service. A 1963 circular by the District Attorney's Office instructed its prosecutors to exercise peremptory strikes against minorities: " 'Do not take Jews, Negroes, Dagos, Mexicans or a member of any minority race on a jury, no matter how rich or how well educated.' " A manual entitled "Jury Selection in a Criminal Case" was distributed to prosecutors. It contained an article authored by a former prosecutor (and later a judge) under the direction of his superiors in the District Attorney's Office, outlining the reasoning for excluding minorities from jury service. Although the manual was written in 1968, it remained in circulation until 1976, if not later, and was available at least to one of the prosecutors in Miller-El's trial. (Record citations omitted.)
That Southern bigots resisted the participation of minorities in the legal system is hardly news. Nonetheless there's something noteworthy about the quoted case: the Supreme Court issued it in 2003.
My teacher Marvin Mudrick liked to describe the Dadaists, during World War I, issuing a proclamation in protest of the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. The difference between that and our Supreme Court condemning the discriminatory practices of the Dallas County prosecutor of 40 years ago is the difference between irony and undeserved self-congratulation.
Undeserved, because the question irresistably raised by the 2003 case is: Where was the Supreme Court when the people of Dallas needed it? The Dallas DA and his staff deserve our contempt for getting away with what they did. But it was the judiciary that let them get away with it.
(Incidentally, the Dallas DA's office is projecting the image that things have greatly changed during the intervening years, as I'm sure they have.)
Thursday, January 26, 2006 at 11:57PM in Trailing indicators
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