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A Jury of His Peers… Meaning What, Exactly?

An interesting scenario has popped up over at Little Green Footballs [1] which, I will quote to you in its entirety, since it’s a short one:

Mahir Sherif, attorney for Nuradin Abdi (who pleaded guilty in Ohio yesterday to plotting a terror attack on a shopping mall), says his client only admitted guilt because the ignorant infidel jury would not have grasped the subtle nuances [2] of his plan to commit mass murder.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – The attorney for a man accused of plotting to blow up a shopping mall in Columbus says his client decided to plead guilty rather than risk life in prison.

Mahir Sherif says Nuradin Abdi was worried about a jury’s reaction given the country’s current mood.

He says Abdi would not have faced a jury of his peers but rather people with only limited understanding of the issues surrounding the war on terror.

Abdi pleaded guilty in federal court today to conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. He is expected to receive ten years and be deported after serving his sentence.

Kate, over at Small Dead Animals, [3] comes up with a similar story, similarly, short and to the point, involving somebody else:

Really, it makes perfect sense. Who else but those who have “walked a mile in his moccasins” are really fit to pass judgment on an accused? On the other hand, who knows how difficult it will be to find 12 convicted disemboweling sexual deviants [4];

Turns out, Teerhuis is Indian. In today’s Free Press story, he his demanding that his jury for the murder trial be a jury of “his peers”, meaning that the majority of them have to be Aboriginal.To the surprise of absolutely no one, Indians are seldom selected for jury duty due to the fact that people with criminal records cannot be selected. Teerhuis wants this overturned so he can get a jury of Indians.

This is mindboggling for more than the obvious reasons.

There is the fact that Teerhuis, despite being a degenerate sexual psychopath, assumes that a jury of Indians will overlook this and feel pity for him because he’s also Indian. This in turn raises the horrifying notion that he may actually be correct in his assumption.

In an article from 2003, Cox and Forkum suggested that were Fidel Castro ever brought to trial, in an attempt to bring him to justice, a jury of his peers would only consist of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Angus Kahn and the like.

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I don’t think “too dumb” is the issue, here.  Abdi seems to me to be making an argument that I made mention of during the O.J. Simpson fiasco wherein the jury basically ignored the evidence.  What Simpson and his lawyer were looking for, is now referred to as “jury nullification”.  I submit that what Abdi and his mouthpiece are looking for, is precisely the same thing.

113584.jpgSeems to me that the statement made by the founders about ‘a jury of his peers”, was made with the assumption of a certain set of moral values and guiding principles.. that is to say, cultural values… being instilled in each of those peers.  Abdi’s complaint  is that they are not HIS set of moral values and guiding principles, and not HIS culture…but those of the American people.  But, how far can that statement be taken?  How far can we countenance such a complaint?

Are we, for example, To find a number of people who like a dog finding, and black street culture, to fulfill the requirement of having a jury of Michael Vick’s peers?
Or, in the case of the court trial of an Islamic Terrorist to purposely allowed juries to be erected, of  Arab terrorists, like our friend here, because his reasoning is precisely the same as the defendants?  I’m sure, that is such a jury would be to the liking of the defendant, but would it serve justice?

Of course not.

All this goes yet again to the point I’ve made repeatedly over the last seven years on this site; The founders of this country when they wrote our foundational documents, wrote and promoted them with a certain cultural value structure in mind, and made the assumption, that value structure would have the majority sway.  This business about “a jury of his peers” is yet another example of how our laws and our government, and yes even our judicial system, makes very little sense unless those cultural values do hold majority sway.