On her MSNBC show this morning and while discussing the grand jury that Robert Mueller has impaneled in Washington, DC, Joy Reid dismissed as “one of the more absurd arguments I’ve heard” Harvard law prof Alan Dershowitz’s assertion that DC has “an ethnic and racial composition that might be very unfavorable to the Trump Administration.”
Paul Butler, a law prof at George Washington University, reinforced Reid: “Alan Dershowitz was my criminal law professor, but I’m here to teach him: Professor Dershowitz, you’re just wrong on that issue.”
So Reid and Butler are arguing that the racial composition of juries is irrelevant? Wait a second: isn’t the exclusion of African-Americans from juries one of the key complaints of the civil rights community in the area of criminal justice?
Here’s the New York Times worrying about the possible exclusion of African-Americans from juries. And here’s a long TV segment wondering about racial disparities in jury selection . . . on MSNBC!
So why is the race issue front and center on the one hand, but “absurd” when raised in the current case? Neither Reid nor Butler address that question.
Note: you’ll hear Reid chuckle as she describes Dershowitz’s argument that “DC has so many black people in it.” So concern for the racial composition of juries is “absurd” to the point of literally being laughed off. Good to know!
Note segundo: Reid opened the show with a clip of Stephen Colbert: “I’m going to say something right now something no one has ever said before—God, I wish I had jury duty! I’m available.” Don’t jurors swear to be fair and open-minded? Guess that doesn’t apply in liberal-land when Trump is the target.
JOY REID: one of the ways that Trump’s supporters and backers are trying to back him up is by saying the composition of this grand jury is unfair to Donald Trump. On Friday, on WABC, Alan Dershowitz, who’s been a huge defender of Donald Trump, claimed that, he told Rita Cosby that the racial and ethnic makeup is stacked against Donald Trump because DC has so many black people in it. That seems to me to be one of the more absurd arguments that I’ve heard against this grand jury process. What do you make of it?PAUL BUTLER: Alan Dershowitz was my criminal law professor, but I’m here to teach him: Professor Dershowitz, you’re just wrong on that issue.
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