by Ed Dugan

Created on: October 23, 2008   Last Updated: November 05, 2008

There is something terribly wrong with our criminal justice system and it has nothing to do with how liberal or conservative our judges are. Granted you the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals would let Jack the ripper off with a slap on the wrist but it's the system that's broken, not the judiciary.

Don't buy into the argument that the justice system is entirely racially motivated merely because the number of black prisoners versus the number of white prisoners is disproportionate to the population at large. There are more blacks than whites in prison because blacks commit more crimes and whites get away with more crimes. There are also more blacks in prison for another reason. Although we have made major strides in erasing embedded racisiom in America, a good case might be made that a lot of white jurors look at a black defendent with the goal of delivering punishment rather than justice.

Given the huge discrepency between the day to day living conditions of many blacks versus whites, you might say the crime statistics go with the territory, or more accurately, the neighborhood. If you are poor, uneducated, unemployed and also happen to be black, hope is just another four letter word that has no meaning for you and, without it you do anything you can to survive. When your hanging around the hood month after month with nothing to do, and where poverty and hard times are a given, boredom becomes your enemy and stopping it from consuming you becomes a challenge. Often crime is the answer, maybe the only answer. This does not excuse blacks who commit crimes but it helps put everything in perspective. If the scales of justice provide different weights for black defendents and white defendents, they need to be fixed.

The Bill of Rights requires that accused people be judged by a jury of their peers. Now that phrase is open to a lot of interpretations. The dictionary defines peer as "one who is equal to another in rank, or merit or quality". Using that definition literally, what comes to mind is the potential makeup of a jury for a Fortune 500 CEO and that of your neighborhood dope dealer. Should the CEO have a jury composed of business leaders and chambers of commerce types while the dope dealer have twelve people from the hood sitting on his or her jury? Basically, the Founding Fathers had in mind a jury of common people, without rank or privelege - the man or woman on the street, so to speak. What they did not have in mind is a high-priced "jury selection consultant" trying

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