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| Lady Justice (Photo by Carptrash) |
This week, two seemingly diverse rulings were made: one dealing a "significant blow" to Mayor Bloomberg's attempts to put some "limits on large sugary
drinks," and the other rejecting a "lawyer's request that Jewish people be excluded from a jury…"
Although the latter case seems qualitatively different from the former one, they both illustrate the dangers of too much power in the hands of too few people. The New York Times
reports that Justice Milton A.
Tingling of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan deemed Bloomberg's initiative to be "arbitrary and capricious." Tingling
also pointed out that "the Board of Health, which is appointed by the mayor, had overreached in approving the plan…" He even referred to this alliance between the city's leadership and the board as a potential "administrative Leviathan" that would be "limited only by its own
imagination."
ABC News reports that Prosecutor William Sarratt of the latter case did not mince words either. Lawyer
Frederick Cohn - representing Abdel Hameed Shehadeh (who is "accused of lying about plans to kill Americans in Afghanistan") - had initially told federal Judge
Eric Vitaliano the following:
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 set aside any
innate antipathy. Sarrett therefore responded with this vigorous statement: I don't
think [the magistrate overseeing jury selection] will be ready to violate the
Constitution and exclude people from the jury on the basis of
their religious beliefs.
This is not the first time that an anti-Semitic request of this nature has been made.
In 2010, Aafia Siddiqui
(who was "accused of killing American soldiers in Afghanistan, and plotting an attack in New York") asked another federal judge to give DNA tests to prospective jurors in order to exclude Jews.
Resources
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/12/nyregion/judge-invalidates-bloombergs-soda-ban.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0
http://news.yahoo.com/jury-without-jews-request-rejected-york-city-judge-234804025--abc-news-topstories.html
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