A Proposal for Reducing Rioting After a Police Officer or Vigilante Has Been Acquitted of a Criminal Charge that the Officer or Vigilante Caused the Death of a Black Person

A PROPOSAL FOR REDUCING RIOTING AFTER A POLICE OFFICER OR VIGILANTE HAS BEEN ACQUITTED OF A CRIMINAL CHARGE THAT THE OFFICER OR VIGILANTE CAUSED THE DEATH OF A BLACK PERSON
Tuesday Feb. 22nd, 2022

 

After a police officer or vigilante has been acquitted of a criminal charge that the officer or vigilante or vigilante caused the death of a black person (a suspect or otherwise), there are usually riots in large American cities protesting the finding of innocence.

There have been many such acquittals, and many such riots.

As I have previously argued (in my blog posting of "Failure to Heed the Discourse of the Poor," at http://boilingspringsnewton.blogspot.com/ under June 12th, 2021), such rioting can reasonably be interpreted as the natural outgrowth of originally peaceable assemblies to petition the Government for redress of grievances, which are made legal by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The most-favored solution for forestalling such riots is one in which the right to assemble peaceably is not diminished or craftily rendered inaccessible to citizens in any way.

The solution I propose is that when a police officer or vigilante is charged with unlawful behavior in an incident in which the officer or vigilante caused the death of a person belonging to a minority listed as a minority on any United States government website or in any United States law, at least half of the jury members must be of the same minority as the person who was killed.

Any admissible evidence that the minority in question used to be listed as a minority on any United States government website, but has since been removed from that list on that website, will be considered to be evidence that that minority is, for the purpose of this law, currently listed as a minority on a United States government website.

It is perfectly obvious that a law fulfilling this purpose would have to be far, far longer than this proposal.  To anyone who considers this proposal an idea worth working for, clauses and language forestalling loopholes will immediately come to mind.

The rioting described here may take place after an acquittal, but such rioting may also take place immediately after the officer or vigilante or vigilante has caused the death of a black person, before an acquittal indeed before any trial has taken place.

The purpose of a law fulfilling the description proposed here would be to forestall rioting after an acquittal, by decreasing the probability of an acquittal in the case of an officer or vigilante acting in bad faith or without appropriate restraint -- and to forestall rioting before charges have been brought against the officer or vigilante in question, by increasing the faith of the minority to which the slain person belongs, that the system of justice will operate fairly and without prejudice -- in other words, by increasing the faith of the minority that a majority of citizens will not use the doctrine of qualified immunity to acquit an officer or vigilante who has acted in bad faith or without appropriate restraint.

Frank Newton