from the horse's mouth

Occasionally i like to read nonfiction books which add to my awareness that American 'justice' is rotten to the core. I'm reading one such book now: THE TRIALS OF WALTER OGROD and just came across something so juicy i'd like to share it with u. This is from p.183-184 which quotes extensively from a 1986 training video tape shown to young prosecutors in Philadelphia to train them in the process of 'voir dire' or jury selection. I'm editing it a little for the sake of brevity and clarity.

"the case law says that the object of getting a jury is to get - i had to look this up because i didn't know this was the purpose of a jury - a 'competent, fair, and impartial jury'...  Well, that's ridiculous. You're not going to get that...  And if any one of u think u're going to be some noble civil libertarian and try to get (fair) jurors, that's ridiculous. U'll lose and be out of office...  The only way u're going to do your best is to get jurors that are as unfair and more likely to convict than anyone in that room."

"The ideal juror from the Commonwealth's standpoint ...  would be willing to hang his own mother...  take solid, well-dressed citizens from strong families, people who read simple books instead of Karl Marx. Never take a lawyer or a law student, never take a social worker, don't take a teacher, they're too liberal, unless maybe it's a white teacher from a mostly black school who is fed up with black teenagers. Never take Quakers, they need too much evidence. Blacks from low income areas are less likely to convict, so u don't want "those people" on your jury; it may look like u're being racist, but u're just being realistic..."

"most of all, keep smart people off the jury... Smart people will analyze the hell out of your case...  They hold u to a higher standard...  They take those words 'reasonable doubt' and they actually try to think about them. You want people to come in there and say, 'Yep, she said he did it, he did it'".

who could ever love u?

the title of this is the title of mary trump's newly published book, a memoir about her own dysfunctional upbringing and lasting sense of social isolation and alienation from family, topics which highly resonate with me. other than that it wasn't a particularly noteworthy work. it did reinforce the message of her first book about the dysfunctional trump family with much focus on the patriarch fred trump, her paternal grandfather, a 'sociopath without normal human emotions' who she blames for destroying her father's life and having a great influence on her narcisistic uncle donald, ex and possible future president of the u.s..

an interesting and unexpected facet of the book was the revealing portrait of her mother as a largely detached, uncaring parent overwhelmed by her own sense of having been shafted by life and battling chronic depression. mary relates how as a child suffering from severe asthma attacks that often came late at night, leaving her gasping for air, she would go to her mother for help, who instead of taking her immediately to a nearby hospital would tell her to get in bed with her and then go back to sleep or feign going back to sleep, leaving mary to suffer until morning came (this was after her parents had divorced and her hapless alcoholic dad was no longer around to be of help). she also related late in the book how her mother continued to make her feel unworthy of attention/love long after she became an adult, by continuously interrupting her in conversation and claiming to be unable to hear her although she stated that her hearing aid otherwise worked perfectly well. this strongly reminded me of my own relationship with my father, who always gave me the impression that anything i said to him went in one ear and immediately out the other.

the last strong takeaway i have from this book was another passage towards the end when she states that watching her awful uncle donald get elected POTUS  was like a hallucination, it was so hard to believe. my response to that would be, no, it's not a hallucination, it's a symptom of living in a dystopian world!