Chauvin: A jury of his peers?

NPR, March 11:  Several members of the jury pool in the Derek Chauvin case have said they fear retribution if they were to render an unpopular verdict

Regardless of the merits of the case against Derek Chauvin, there is certainly reasonable doubt about the makeup of the jury: The smart ones begged off--only those already disposed to convict would have readily agreed to serve in the Trial of the Century:

PROSPECTIVE JUROR 1: "The case itself is just very - this whole thing is just very divisive, and I'm not a divisive person. I don't - I just feel like - I'd just rather not be a part of something that's so two-sided."

 
And I certainly wouldn't risk myself and my family because my name got out that I voted not guilty. 

PROSPECTIVE JUROR 2: "With a high-profile case, I know everything becomes public. So depending on what's ruled, that could be the problem later on down the line or even in the process."

Epilogue:  GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS

____________________

LATE ADD [Denouement]:

Alt. juror in Chauvin trial on mob: ‘I was concerned they would come to my house’

KARE-TV 11’s Lou Raguse shared online that the jurors were so intimidated that they didn’t even share their real names with each other.

He tweeted: “This was shocking to me, but Christensen told me she and the other jurors didn’t even share their real names and occupations with each other. Just called each other by juror number. Got along but mostly made small talk. Concerned about saying too much.'”

“I had mixed feelings,” she said. “I did not want to go through rioting and destruction again, and I was concerned about people coming to my house if they were not happy with the verdict.”

A modest proposal re: our Constitution's flaws

Yes, by all means--

It may take a century or two, but tat-for-tat, eventually a 435-member Supreme Court. Pack the HELL out of it.

And in the meantime, let's admit DC and PR and Guam and Samoa and then split up the rest of the states and get a 435-member Senate. 

Then let's elect 435 presidents.  It's only fair.

Although then we might have to expand to 870 of each to keep it fair.  That would be even more democratic. But first things first.  One constitutional miracle at a time.

Tweets that Aged Well, and Tweets that did not Age Well

 

Seth Barrett Tillman, Tweets that Aged Well, and Tweets that did not Age Well, New Reform Club (Apr. 16, 2021, 4:29 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2021/04/tweets-that-aged-well-and-tweets-that.html>;

Is it Believable?

 

Natsu Taylor Saito, Indefinite Detention, Colonialism, and Settler Prerogative in the United States, in Special Issue: Genealogies of Indefinite Detention, 30(1) Social & Legal Studies 32–65 (February 2021):

Tens of thousands of civilians in northern and border states were interned and many more banished without any specific showing of disloyalty. In one Missouri county, for example, by late 1863 only 600 people remained out of a population of 10,000 (Brownlie, 1958: 126, 163). Congress subsequently authorized suspension of the writ in 1871 to help suppress the Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction South, in 1902 to facilitate the colonial conquest of the Philippines, and in 1900 to preclude threats to the annexation of Hawai‘i (Klein and Wittes, 2011: 120–122). 

Why tell us that the population was reduced from 10,000 to 600 unless the bulk of that decrease arose in connection with habeas-related, internment-related, and/or banishment-related policies? And if this meaning was intended by the author, is it believable?

Seth

Seth Barrett Tillman, Is it Believable, New Reform Club (April 5, 2021, 2:23 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2021/04/is-it-believable.html>;