'Jury without Jews' denied: Anti-Semitic request by Muslim rejected by judge

[oberliner]

A "jury without Jews" denied request by a New York judge today is making headline news. According to a March 11 ABC top news report, an attorney representing a suspected Muslim terrorist made a request that is not only anti-Semitic; it is a violation of the U.S. Constitution regarding racism and civil rights.

Frederick Cohn, counsel representing Abdel Hameed Shehadeh, who is accused of lying about planned terror against Americans in Afghanistan, made the motion last month.

However, the "jury without Jews" request was denied.

"Your Honor . . . as you know, I'm not wild about having Jews on the jury in this case. Given that there's going to be inflammatory testimony about Jews and Zionism, I think it would be hard for Jews to cast aside any innate antipathy," read the attorney's request in February.


http://www.examiner.com/article/jury-without-jews-denied-anti-semitic-request-by-muslim-rejected-by-judge

[arely staircase]

1. his lawyer was correct in making the motion

the judge was correct in denying it.

[unblock]

4. see post #2. it's not a juror's jewishness that's the concern, it's certain attitudes.

you question the juror to determine the attitudes and object on that basis.

if they have attitudes you don't object to, who cares if the're jewish? leave them on the jury.
if they have the attitudes you object to, who cares if they're not jewish? challenge them.

[arely staircase]

6. any lawyer with a demonstrably anti-anything client

should and would try to keep any of the members of the group in question off their client's jury. anything less could/should get a lawyer disbarred.

[oberliner]

9. That is preposterous

If a lawyer is defending a racist and they asked that no African-Americans be included on the jury, then they ought to get disbarred.

This was a similarly stupid request - which the lawyer seems to have finally realized.

[cali]

11. that's shocklingly ignorant. The lawyer admitted he was wrong to

to make a frankly unconstitutional motion.

[arely staircase]

12. he admitted he was wrong to have spoken the words he did

i'm guessing he still will use his strikes to get as jew-less a jury as possible.

so you are saying if you were a lawyer representing an accused al quaeda terrorist you wouldn't try to get all the jews off the jury?

[cali]

13. no. I would question people closely to determinine their biases and try to exclude

those with biases against my client's interests. I mean this is basic stuff. And I hate to break this to you, but Jews don't all have a uniform opinion on all matters, anymore than any other group does. duh.

[arely staircase]

14. yeah, it is pretty basic stuff alright

if a lawyer is representing a klansman acccused of a hate crime, he is gonna strike as many blacks from that jury as he can. he may even spout a line of bs about questioning them closely, but he is striking them if he is doing his job.

[Swamp Lover]

7. I disagree that the attorney was wise to argue the motion.

Failure risks alienating potential jurors. But I do agree that the judge was correct in denying it.

[arely staircase]

8. perhaps

but let us not pretend that any lawyer worthy of a bar card would not try to keep jews off their alegedy anti-"zionist" client's jury.

or for that matter turkish americans off their greek cypriot client's jury, etc.

that is what your lawyer does for you under our system

[dsc]

2. that has to be the world's dumbest lawyer

Had he been smarter he would have questioned jurors about Israel and Zionism and used answers to disqualify when possible and used peremptory challenges to finish the job. Now if he tries that the prosecutor can bust him. This really crosses into malpractice to be honest.

[unblock]

3. +1 i was about to post something very similar

[Honeycombe8]

5. That's somewhat vague. Jewish by birth? Jewish by religion?

Did he mean of Hebrew ancestry? You can be Hebrew and Christian. You can be anglo and belong to the Jewish religion.

[oberliner]

10. The whole thing was ridiculous

I can't believe this was asked for real.

[arely staircase]

15. he meant jewish as in

people my client has sworn to kill tht i don't want sitting on his jury.

[Honeycombe8]

20. That would be BOTH Hebrew and of the Jewish religion, I guess. nt

[arely staircase]

16. and btw. anti-semitic is probably not the best word since

since the defendant is semitic and probably wouldn't mind a jury full of semites as long as they were arabs.

[Fawke Em]

17. Thank you!

I know the word, anti-Semitic was coined to mean anti-Jewish, but, given that Arabs (and other cultures, too) are also Semitic, the term really does sound silly to those of us who know the origin of most Arabs.

[cali]

18. bzzzt. wrong again

anti-semitic is a term coined expressly to denote bigotry against jews. And that's it's definition everywhere.

[Posteritatis]

19. Except pretty much everyone knows that's splitting hairs and the term's meaning is clear. (nt)