Throughout this summer, our local TV and radio newscasts have been packed with bites and clips of New York City mayoral candidates Christine Quinn, Bill Thompson and Bill de Blasio declaring their firm opposition to “stop-and-frisk” policing on the grounds that it’s predicated on racial profiling; thus it’s illegal, unconstitutional, or both.
Naturally, that’s where these reports politely end. Practical follow-up questions go unasked, thus unheard.
The indisputable fact of this matter is that racial profiling — as well as gender, religious, ethnic, sexual preference, personal finance, occupation and overall social profiling — can’t possibly be illegal or unconstitutional, not when both prosecutorial and defense lawyers heavily rely upon — and admit to — such profiling in the selection of juries.
A further indisputable fact: Such subjective profiling — reasonable assumptions based on matters including a jury candidate’s race — is considered essential to all trial lawyers’ representation of either side.
And there is no trial attorney or trial judge who will waste his or her breath to dispute such a truth.
So, if three of NYC’s top mayoral candidates insist that racial profiling is illegal — if they know this to be true — how would they explain a justice system that prior to trial is heavily reliant on racial profiling?
The “right” jury — and through 200 years of American judicial history — often becomes the verdict’s determinant factor than the facts of the case and whether the accused is guilty, not guilty or just plainly innocent.
However, historians and news media are far more inclined to note, with great suspicion, that “an all-white jury” convicted a minority defendant. With the judicial shoe now far more commonly on both feet — multiracial/ethnic juries, based on racial profiling — no such suspicions or examinations are allowed.
It would be nice if one of our anti-stop-and-frisk candidates were asked to explain how the racial profiling that they claim to abhor is nonetheless practiced as a must in selecting juries in the pursuit of justice.
But even to politicians on the make, such a question might be too impolitic to be pursued with TV cameras and microphones. Those quick-hitters with candidates are supposed to be seen (at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m.) and heard (all day on radio) as a good day’s news work.
So what are we left with?
Well, what’s so often accompanied to the chant of “No justice, no peace!” often, down the judicial road, becomes a matter of “No racial profiling, no justice pursued!”