Word: acquits
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Hooper reports that the prosecutor's summing-up rattled Hurley and his defense team. But it did not sway the jury, which took just three hours (including lunch) to acquit him. Racism - sometimes blatant, sometimes subtle - casts its shadow over every corner of this tragic tale. Grappling with the verdict and the celebrations it triggered, Hooper writes that it was as if Hurley had been "not so much acquitted as forgiven. And in forgiving him, people forgave themselves." For many who read The Tall Man, all that forgiveness may be hard to understand...
...Breaking the Habit The writers of The Wire are wrong to advocate jury nullification as civil disobedience in America's war on drugs [March 17]. These men say they would acquit any drug defendant, regardless of the evidence, if the crime did not involve violence. Their position undermines the legal system - society would collapse if everyone applied this principle for his own social grievance. And it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between "nonviolent" and "violent" drug offenses. The seeds of violence - shattered lives, shattered bodies, broken homes - are sown every time illegal drugs "peacefully" pass from hand...
...writers of the wire are wrong to advocate jury nullification as civil disobedience in the war on drugs [March 17]. These men say they would acquit any drug defendant, regardless of the evidence, if the crime did not involve violence. Their position undermines the legal system--society would collapse if everyone applied this principle for his own social grievance. And it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between "nonviolent" and "violent" drug offenses. The seeds of violence--shattered lives, shattered bodies, broken homes--are sown every time illegal drugs "peacefully" pass from hand to hand. We indeed need...
...writers of the show have taken that message to heart. In a co-signed editorial published in this week’s issue of Time, they argue that any citizen asked to serve on a jury for a non-violent drug case should vote to acquit, no matter what the crime. It doesn’t matter whether or not you agree; if the argument interests you, you need to track down DVDs of “The Wire.” It’s rare that a television show can offer that kind of intellectual honesty...
...asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will - to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty - no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens...