At the trial of Roy Oliver, the police officer charged with the murder of Jordan Edwards, they need to exclude neo-Confederate jurors.

The following reporting on the shooting of Balch Springs, Texas teenager Jordan Edwards brings up many details I haven't seen before.

After Jordan Edwards was shot by the police and his brothers saw Jordan bleed out, they were handcuffed. As is often the case, I found this information about the handcuffs in a news source outside of Dallas.

http://www.kens5.com/news/politics/lawmakers-demand-change-after-police-shooting-of-balch-springs-teen/437442222

It turns out that the police chief had to state a retraction of Roy Oliver's claim that the car was backing aggressively towards them because the video showed that it was some young people trying to leave a bad situation. How many other times was Roy Oliver's testimony not really true? How many people have been convicted?

One thing I think should be done, if a police officer is caught out with testimony  or an account at great variance with the facts, we don't have to decided whether it is lying, all court cases where the testimony of the officer was critical to the conviction need to be thrown out and the prisoner is still in jail released immediately. Traffic tickets should be subject to an immediate refund.

Convicting Roy Oliver will be tough experts say, even though it is fairly obvious as is explained in this news article.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/article149021384.html

Police officers are let off the hook for murders and other violent behavior.

http://www.twincities.com/2017/05/04/st-paul-police-officer-michael-soucheray-not-guilty-after-being-charged-with-striking-teen/

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/us/alton-sterling-justice-department.html?_r=0

I think that one reason contributing to police officers being let off the hook is that jurors with racial attitudes, especially those with racial attitudes that they don't recognize as such are allowed on juries and they find some rational to let these violent officers off the hook.

When I in jury selections they will ask if anyone is a white supremacist or a member of a white supremacist group. No one leaves. Though there shouldn't be any white supremacists on a jury, this question should be recognized as incompetent or an avoidance of asking the critical questions to exclude people with racial attitudes.

The chances of a person who is self-identified white supremacist is rather small. The chances of a person with racial attitudes is rather high, probably a large percentage. What needs to be done is to have questions to screen out these individuals so that they are not in the jury and in particular they can be screen out with cause.

The attorneys are allow to screen out a few jurors without cause. This means usually the attorney for whom it is advantages screens out all the African American jurors and the jury ends up being biased against African Americans.

I think one question to screen out jurors should be "Have you ever used the expression, 'I am not prejudiced, but ...'"  In Dallas, Texas after asking that question you might have a greatly reduced pool of white jurors left over from the screening.

I think historical questions would be good to identify attitudes. I think that it should be asked whether the person is a member or has been a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, United Daughters of the Confederacy, Dallas Southern Memorial Association, Children of the Confederacy, League of the South, and Council of Conservative Citizens.

Further it should be asked if they participate in any Confederate re-enactor unit.

But most importantly their attitudes towards the Confederate flag, monuments and the Confederacy itself should be inquired. I think it would go a long way towards excluding persons who say, "I am not prejudiced, but ..." or have racial attitudes.

Dr. Euan Hague and I propose this in this online Black Commentator article.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/507/507_confederacy_jury_selection_sebesta_hague_guests_share.html

For example, a majority of Americans don't think the Confederate flag is racist. I think excluding these individuals would go a long way to correcting the composition of a jury.

Other lines of historical questioning could be done also. I don't think support for the Confederacy is the only thing. Did the person think Africans were benefited by being brought over from Africa? I  run into this sometimes in Dallas.

Right now we are on track to having a trial where Roy Oliver will be acquitted.

Jury selection and the Confederate flag.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/us/louisiana-death-row-inmate.html?mwrsm=Facebook&_r=0&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2F

In this article an African American juror was rejected with cause because he was opposed to the Confederate flag in this death penalty trial.

I think it is time we start rejecting Confederate flag supporters and persons sympathetic to the Confederacy from juries.

Professor Euan Hague and I had this article proposing that jurors sympathetic to the Confederacy be removed from juries.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/507/507_confederacy_jury_selection_sebesta_hague_guests_share.html

Jurors questioned about Confederate "heritage" in trial of John Wiley Price

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2016/11/11/federal-officials-begin-early-search-potential-jurors-upcoming-john-wiley-price-corruption-trial


The use of the term "heritage" by the "Dallas Morning News" says something about them.

This was my article about selecting jurors and excluding members of neo-Confederates groups and other persons sympathetic to the Confederacy.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/507/507_confederacy_jury_selection_sebesta_hague_guests_share.html

I don't know if the lawyers mountain the defense of John Wiley Price ever read or heard of my paper. They might have, on the other hand not having neo-Confederates or Lost Cause believes as jurors in the case where an African American is a defendant is sort of an obvious thing to do.

Of course Price can afford paid lawyers and it remains to be seen if public defender lawyers will start making inquiries.

This case at least sets a precedent for other lawyers to follow.

Evidently you can wear a Confederate flag to jury duty in South Carolina

This is the link to the story.

http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article98342522.html

From the article. 

As the lawyer for the defendant, Abusaft said that “I speak for my client” and he was concerned that the shirt and its message were potentially confrontational. The flag shirt and slogan meant to send a message to people, Abusaft said.

But the judge ruled that the woman had stated that she could be fair and impartial, and did not excuse the woman from the potential jury panel. 

Abusaft then chose to use one of his juror “strikes” – both sides have the right to dismiss a certain number of potential jurors when picking a jury. The woman was dismissed from the case and never was seated as a juror.

This is atrocious. The judge needs to be thrown off the bench. I don't see the name of the judge in the article which to me is how "The State" enables neo-Confederacy.

This is my article about not allowing jurors who identify with the Confederacy on juries.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/507/507_confederacy_jury_selection_sebesta_hague_guests_share.html

Poll: 29 percent of Mississippians would back a new Confederacy. Regarding the poll results and Jury duty.

The Sun Herald had an article about a recent poll taken of attitudes towards secession.

http://www.sunherald.com/2014/07/17/5701899/poll-29-percent-of-mississippians.html

The question pollsters question was:

"If there were another Civil War today, would you side with the Confederate States of America or the United States of America?"

It was run by Public Policy Polling (PPP). It was asked of 691 Mississippians.

Of all Mississippians polled, 29% would back the Confederate States of America (CSA).

The article states that only 2% of African Americans would support the CSA. One can only imagine how the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) would be interested in locating these African Americans to parade them around with a Confederate flag.

The article doesn't tell the statistics regarding white people in the U.S.A.

The article does break it down by party affiliation though.

Democrats: 82% for the USA and 9% for the CSA.
Republicans: 41% for the USA and 37% for the CSA.

What is astounding is that less than half the Republicans in Mississippi would support the USA.

Perhaps the whole point of this poll was to show that Republicans aren't that patriotic. As I have stated in earlier blog postings one of the Republicans regular political activities was to assert that the Democrats were somehow unpatriotic and the Republicans were more patriotic. When you have less than half of your supporters choose the USA your assertion of being more patriotic becomes absurd.

The results were further broken down by who people supported in the Republican primary.

For Thad Cochran supporters 61% chose the USA which I think is very low, but not surprising for a candidate that interviewed in Southern Partisan, 22% chose the CSA.

For Tea Party challenger McDaniels, 38% chose the USA and 37% chose the CSA. What is rather amazing is that 62% would choose the CSA or aren't sure that they would chose the USA.

I was not able to find a link to the poll results at the PPP website.

I think that in Mississippi screening out pro-CSA supporters from jury pools is a very reasonable activity. People who would choose the CSA should not be be jurors.

The poll adds additional justification to my article on jury duty published in the Black Commentator. The following is the free guest link.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/507/507_confederacy_jury_selection_sebesta_hague_guests_share.html