Word: verdicts
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...TIME/CNN poll conducted last Friday by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman, 78% of 200 blacks questioned, and 79% of 798 whites, said they thought before the verdict that the policemen would be found guilty. On many other questions, a majority or plurality of one race agreed with a much larger segment of the other: 62% of whites, but 92% of blacks, thought they would have voted to convict if they had been on the jury. The riots that followed were condemned as completely unjustified by 63% of whites and 42% of the blacks; an additional 20% of blacks and 14% of whites...
White opinion, like black, also is divided -- even among policemen. Like other whites, hardly any cops will say flat-out that they approve of the verdict, or of the conduct of the policemen who were acquitted. Some, however, do express relief and opine that the public got a distorted impression of what happened from the tape. There was -- there must have been -- other evidence that led the jury to acquit. "The trial was much more than 81 seconds of tape," says Houston burglary sergeant Doug Elder. "The media and politicians took the tape and indicted, tried and convicted those officers...
...Bush is also often a half-beat behind the mood of the moment, and so he was this time. On Wednesday night, immediately after the verdict, he gave reporters an utterly inadequate statement: "The court system has worked. What's needed now is calm, respect for the law." On Thursday he issued a series of statements that were stern in condemning the rioting but confusing about what, if anything, he intended to do about the verdict...
...this time the President also pronounced the tape of King's beating "revolting" and spoke of the "anger" and "pain" he had experienced watching it. More important, he at last announced that the verdict of the Simi Valley jury was "not the end." He ordered federal authorities to speed an investigation with a view toward starting a federal prosecution of the four cops for violating King's civil rights, utilizing a law enacted specifically to apply in cases where state courts and juries could or would not convict. That move might help convince skeptical blacks that they can after...
Before the verdict was announced, what did you think it would...