Re: [Leica] Re: asked for ID? (increasingly off topic)

[Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>]

At 04:11 PM 2/1/2000 -0800, Alexey Merz wrote:
>Who's likely to pay the higher price if falsely accused? 
>It ain't gonna be the white yuppie. Hell, he'll probably 
>get good enough legal representation to get off. The poor
>guy trying to feed his family is going to be told by the
>public defender to cop a plea bargain, guilty or no.

Alexey, pray allow this criminal-defense attorney to intrude.  This is my
life-blood.

First, the Yuppie would now probably get convicted unless a JURY let him
off.  Judges and prosecutors are far too sensitive to the PERCEPTION that
they favour the upper-middle class to do anything quite so openly unfair as
letting the Yuppie off entirely.  But they would, as you perceive, allow
the charge to be dropped so the white upper-middle-class kid ends up doing
2,500 hours of community service while the black kid from the disadvantaged
home does 20 hard years turnin' big ones into little ones.

And the public defender WILL tell the black kid to cop a plea:  he'll get
20 years from a judge but life from a jury, the jury being inculcated by a
constant media barrage about Horrible Black Dope Dealers With Big Guns Who
Will Break Into Your House And Take Your Leicas If They Don't Have Black
Tape On Them.  Hell, around here the middle-class blacks are harder on a
black defendant, for letting the side down and promoting this false image,
than are white jurors.

We have had a constant erosion of civil rights in this country since March,
1933, and it is becoming a barrage.  Anyone listen to Babblin' Bill, the
Moron's Friend, the other night?  1200 more government programmes which
result in mindless bureaucrats running the minutiae of your lives.  Or
listen to the Republican candidates:  when the Democrats say, "we'll buy it
for you", these guys chant, "but we'll get a better deal!"  No major-party
candidate really believes in civil rights.

If I were in soap-box mode, I'd go on, but this is closer to politics than
I like to see the LUG get.

Marc

msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!