Racial Politics and Justice

The Obama Justice Department is apparently dissatisfied with the Johannes Mehserle verdict and is now considering bringing charges against former BART cop and prosecuting him again for the same crime.  No matter what your rationale, the Feds being able to try someone twice for the same crime is "double jeopardy" and unconstitutional.  However, the Feds like being able to use crime and racial politics to further political goals, i.e. to pander to a certain voting bloc.

George H.W. Bush did it against the cops who arrested Rodney King, after a California jury found them largely innocent of wrong-doing.  The cops were tried a second time in a federal court, found guilty and sentenced to prison terms.  There is no doubt in my mind that this was done to placate the majority of American blacks (blacks are far more racially conscious than are whites).

Justice had little to do with it.  Had the races been reversed, there would have been no federal retrial.  Think of O.J. Simpson, an obvious double-murderer with mountains of seemingly irrefutable evidence of his guilt.  A mostly black jury let him off.  It was clearly a case of jury nullification, i.e., delivering a verdict that was contrary to the evidence.  This was done because the black jurors did not see the case as the people vs. an accused murderer; they saw it as a case of white people vs. a black man.  To the jurors, skin color pre-empted any consideration of justice or evidence.   No Justice Department ever considered retrying O.J.  He was the wrong color, as were his victims.

Under Obama, this disparity in justice on the basis of race will only get worse.  Per the Hillbuzz blog:

Testimony from Justice Department officials has revealed a policy under Holder not to prosecute blacks accused of crimes against whites. Black people are not to be prosecuted, and, under Holder, are to be treated by a different set of laws than whites.

Now Eric Holder is thinking of retrying Mehserle, himself a white victim of circumstance in an accident that killed a black man.  Perhaps Mehserle will be the next sacrificial lamb on the altar of racial preferences.  You see, to liberals, black people are really a nation of Dali Lamas living in our midst, a sacred tribe whose every prejudice and paranoia must be gently handled with great deference and sensitivity.  It is more than a crime to ever offend a black person for any reason at any time:  it is a terrible sin.  If it ever happens, heaven and earth must be moved, if needed, to remove the offense and right the wrong.  If that means retrying a man already convicted, in order to get a more stringent verdict, so be it.

And that, my friends, is why we have a different standard for black people than we do for white people.  And if you think this unfair, you're a raaaaacist.