Hillary Clinton’s running mate Tim Kaine once blocked three jurors from hearing a case based entirely on their race because they were white. He was clearly trying to leverage the case for his client, who was black.
The Washington Examiner has the story:
Kaine once blocked three potential jurors from hearing a case because they were white
As an attorney in the 1980s, Tim Kaine once had three white jurors struck from hearing a case in which his client, an African-American, alleged she was discriminated against by the defendant, who was white, the Daily Beast reported Monday.
Kaine explained later that the move was aimed at securing more black people on the jury, thus increasing his client’s odds of winning her housing discrimination suit.
The white defendant’s attorney employed peremptory strikes on the day of the trial to have three black people removed from the pool of potential jurors, the Daily Beast report explained. Kaine responded in kind: He used peremptory strikes of his own to have three white jurors removed, and succeeded in getting one African-American onto the jury.
Kaine explained later in an article for the University of Richmond Law Review in 1989 that he believed having more black people on the jury would swing things in his client’s favor, implicitly admitting the tactic was race-based.
“I struck three white veniremen, not because they were unsympathetic individuals, but purely to increase the odds that the jury would have at least one black representative,” Kaine wrote in article titled “Race, Trial Strategy, and Legal Ethics.”
By moving to have more black people on the jury, Kaine was “betting that a black juror would have more empathy for a black plaintiff than a white juror would,” the Daily Beast reported. “That bet was based on racial stereotyping, and Kaine knew it.”
Democrats love to accuse Republicans of being racists but they are often the ones who race bait and use race to turn people against each other.
It’s a classic case of projection.
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