Jury Selection Weeds Out ‘Unworthies’

To The Editor:
The public energy being spent hurling ridicule at the Casey Anthony trial would be more productive if put to use correcting the legal system that gave rise to the verdict.
In today’s legal world justice is no longer desirably blind, but distinctly partial to moneyed defendants as statistics have revealed over and over.
One of the many ways in which money contributes to a trial’s outcome is the jury selection process. In old principle, juries were to be formed from a random selection of qualified candidates. However, this fair arrangement has been put aside in our society by attorneys who have pressured legislators to pass laws giving lawyers the power to manipulate a jury’s composition.
Consequently, a defendant’s attorney can dismiss six people from the jury pool who are thought likely to vote against the client’s wishes. In some cases, professional profilers are hired to assist attorneys in determining who are those “unworthies.”
The lesson of this is a simple one, persons who react to the effects of inequality with whine and fume but avoid exerting themselves to the reform of causes have willed to their future a rich source of renewable complaints.
RAY LEWIS
Corbin City