British Shari’a Watch
Charles Johnson
Mon Feb 17, 2003 at 12:39 pm PST • Views: 150
A British judge in the case of radical Muslim freakazoid Abdullah el-Faisal has excluded Jews and Hindus from serving as jurors in the trial. El-Faisal is accused of inciting the murder of … Jews and Hindus.
An excellent essay from Harvey A. Silverglate shows why this is a downright horrible precedent: Jews, Hindus Not Wanted.
This extraordinary step by an experienced judge in a cosmopolitan Western country may simply be an instance of the court’s not wanting someone likely to identify with the intended victims to be on the jury. (If such were the case, the judge could have questioned potential jurors individually for actual bias.) On the other hand, it could be another step in the trend, emphatic already in the American legal system, of equating a citizen’s race or ethnicity with his probable point of view or, more radically still, his ability to judge his fellow citizen fairly on the evidence.
Frank says: