[66937] in Cypherpunks

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Re: active practice in America

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dale Thorn)
Tue Oct 1 02:39:56 1996

Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 23:19:17 -0700
From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
To: "Marc J. Wohler" <mwohler@ix.netcom.com>
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com

Marc J. Wohler wrote:
> At 08:45 AM 9/30/96 -0800, you wrote:
> >At 11:32 PM -0700 9/29/96, Dale Thorn wrote:
> >(Legal purists will point out that the second trial was for "Federal civil
> >rights violations." Harummphh. What would the Founders think of this logic:

> I am sure you know the reason for the 'civil rights violation laws.
> In the 50's & early 60's, all while jury's in the deep south refusing to
> convict obviously guilty white defendants of rape and  murder against blacks.
> What would be *your* remedy in such cases.

I'm glad you asked.  I wouldn't pretend to have *the* answer, but rather 
than screw around with basic Constitutional enumerations, I think the 
"authorities" should have had the guts to challenge those cases (at 
least the most obvious ones at first, to get the ball rolling), by 
investigating and declaring mistrials based on some kind of jury 
manipulation which showed bad faith on the part of the locals.

If they had the guts to do that, rather than cop out to people's 
*democratic* emotions (the easy way out), we'd be a lot better off.
BTW, this applies to a helluva lot of bad law, terrorist for one.


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