Feds go too far to avoid jury bias

Ritchie: Doesn’t include who will monitor prosecutors’ unfairness,

Federal prosecutors are asking a judge to let them evaluate potential jurors via a questionnaire that would “root out” bias that folks don’t even know they have in the case of a Lake County deputy charged criminally with civil rights violations.

The feds want to ask questions such as “Do you have any bumper stickers or symbols on your car? What do they represent?” and “Do you own a handgun?” and “Have you ever heard of the ‘code of silence’ among police officers” who won’t testify against one another and do you believe it exists?

What they don’t state in the motion is who will monitor the unconscious bias of the prosecutors and defense attorneys reading answers to such irrelevant and intrusive questions. Nobody addressed that issue in the motion, which is awaiting ruling by a judge.

Lake Deputy Richard Palmer was charged with depriving a Paisley woman of her civil rights by shooting her and using force or intimidation against her, both felonies, in October 2016.

The 58-year-old officer initially gave this account: Palmer said he was responding to a noise complaint in a rural area back sand roads when a woman in a gold Mercury Marquis ran a stop sign and nearly plowed into him. He yelled at her to stop.

She pulled over, got out and stepped toward him. He told investigators she was pulling “a dark object” out of her left pocket and kept coming though

he ordered her to stop. He shot and wounded her.

Later, Palmer would tell investigators his dashboard camera wasn’t recording because he hadn’t had time to turn on his overhead emergency lights and siren, which would have activated it.

Unfortunately for him, he was wrong about the camera.

It was recording, and the video obtained in September by the Orlando Sentinel shows Robin Pearson, now 54, getting out of the Mercury with her hands up and within two seconds stumbling backward and dropping to the ground after taking a bullet that hit her hip and lodged in her backside.

Pearson drops her hands slightly as she stepped toward Palmer, but they are always visible and never go near any pocket, as Palmer claimed.

The federal charge came two years after a grand jury from State Attorney Brad King’s office cleared the deputy of a wrongful shooting and went so far as to apologize for investigating the incident at all rather than just taking the deputy’s word for it.

The grand jury report explained why members explored the case — as if they shouldn’t — saying police do “dangerous” and “important work” and often are “undervalued” by a community.

The questionnaire being proposed by federal prosecutors looks like an attempt to rub out political bias — but it delves way too deeply into the lives of potential jurors.

Along with the usual demographic questions,

this questionnaire wants to know what people in the jury pool think of the FBI, the U.S. Attorney and the sheriff ’s office. It asks whether the sheriff ’s office does quality work, is effective at law enforcement, treats people fairly and has “any problems” with the way it serves the public.

It asks potential jurors to detail the “best way” for law enforcement to uncover job-related misconduct and whether police should be investigated in the manner that doctors, coaches and teachers are or should be treated differently.

The form asks whether the reader has been stopped by a law-enforcement officer and how he or she felt about it? Felt about it? Seriously? This is starting to sound like a bad TV interview conducted by a witless reporter who couldn’t think of anything smarter to ask.

Some of the questions are outright intrusive.

One wants potential jurors to check a little box to rank themselves between “very conservative” and “very liberal.” What does that have to do with whether a juror can be fair? Unfortunately, there is no little box for “None of your business, nosy government minions.”

Maybe prosecutors should just come out and ask whether the potential juror is a supporter of President Donald Trump. Clearly, it’s what they want to know, though they have been less than clever in disguising their intent.

The form demands jurors list television police shows they watch and how often, along with what books and magazines they’ve read in the past year.

The snooping never ends: Have you ever traveled outside the United States? What social, civic, political, religious, recreational or volunteer organizations do you belong to? Name two people you admire most and state why.

This is nonsense and way out of bounds. The answers to these questions are irrelevant when it comes to legitimate reasons for striking jurors from the panel that will decide Palmer’s fate.

What are called “colorof-law” criminal cases — when the defendant claims that they have the legal authority to have committed the act in question — are a little more tricky than regular ones because the person accused is often a law-enforcement officer.

Asking whether the potential juror thinks the actions of law enforcement officers should ever be questioned or what a juror thinks of people who sue officers makes sense.

That goes to the heart of whether they can be fair. The rest is just crazy talk. A judge should halt it.