Yeah because things are going swimmingly for George Zimmerman’s parents who are in hiding because of the death threats they’ve received. What could possibly go wrong by making the juror’s names public?
Trial watchers became accustomed to referring to the women by their letter and numerical codes during the five weeks of jury selection and testimony.
Now that the trial is over, we ought to know their names.
I’m not advocating that these women become targets of anger over their not guilty verdict — I think they made a sound decision based on the law.
And I’m not suggesting that the jurors be pressured to talk if they choose not to.
I am saying that judges have no business keeping juries anonymous once a trial is over.
Secrecy has no place in a court system founded on openness.
That is such nonsense. She wants the jurors names made public for the same reason any of these jackals does: They want to dig into the background of those women to “prove” they were biased before any evidence was in.
Kassab then gives what she thinks is a valid reason for her line of thinking:
Consider the case of John Gotti.
The Mafia leader was acquitted of racketeering by an anonymous jury in 1987.
Five years went by before it was discovered that one juror had Mafia connections and took a bribe to push for an acquittal.
Perhaps if the jury had not been anonymous, the truth about the rogue juror would have been discovered sooner — or the bribe wouldn’t have happened at all because the risk of scrutiny would have been too great.
This is a bunch of crap. First of all, prosecutors in that case knew from jump street something was wrong with that verdict. Second, the juror in question was convicted of jury tampering in that case.
Oops.
Kassab and her ilk cannot prove there is any really important reason for these jurors names to be revealed. Our media revels not in doing investigations but in digging up dirt. There is a difference. Investigative journalists do their due diligence in trying to find out all they can about a story.
Too many journalists throw shit up against a wall, hoping some of it will stick.