(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
After learning that Donald Trump had hired Butch Bowers of South Carolina to build out his core impeachment defense team, we marveled that the president who spent the last four years surrounding himself with Matt Whitaker, Jenna “the Doctor” Ellis, and, dear heavens, Rudy Giuliani, had finally managed to snag himself a lawyer who seemed competent. Maybe things had turned around for Team Trump’s personnel management?
Fast forward a week…
The Huffington Post headline focuses on Greg Harris, one of the four core members of the Trump defense team. In 1989, while working as an assistant solicitor, Harris dismissed a string of Black jurors over the course of a pair of trials. The law requires an attorney doing such a thing to provide a race-neutral reason for the dismissal. Harris, apparently, decided to step outside the usual options on the racist pretext Bingo card:
In one instance, Harris struck a 43-year-old Black juror he claimed walked slow, talked low and was somewhat aged. In another instance, Harris told the trial judge he struck another potential juror because he was unemployed and “seemed disinterested” during jury selection. But he also added in a racial stereotype.
“I watched him as he walked from the jury panel to the microphone and I have noted that he ― he shucked and jived is what I had. That’s just my analysis of the way he walked up here,” Harris told the court.
Remarkably, or maybe not remarkably for South Carolina in the 1980s, the trial court accepted this as neutral, making you wonder exactly how far down the racist stereotype rabbit hole Harris could have gone before it would’ve raised any flags. And we all know South Carolina is all about never lowering flags!
Thankfully, the South Carolina Supreme Court saw some problems here.
The trial court failed to inquire into or comment on the prosecutor’s explanation that the juror was struck because he “shucked and jived.” The use of this racial stereotype is evidence of the prosecutor’s subjective intent to discriminate and clearly violates the mandates of Batson.
Speaking with the lawyer who brought the case against Harris, Philip Mace, HuffPo relays:
“It was not a difficult argument to make,” Mace said. “I came out of it with a little paper certificate from the ACLU, and Greg got a promotion to assistant United States attorney.”
There really is nothing but an upward career trajectory for this sort of behavior within one of the two major political parties in this country. Or maybe both parties — most of the spring was spent hyping up Andrew Cuomo’s liberal bona fides and casually suggesting higher office for him and, um… does anyone else remember 2008?
I wonder if anyone told Harris that he can’t exclude the Black senators?
Trump Impeachment Lawyer Removed A Black Juror He Said ‘Shucked And Jived’ [Huffington Post]
Earlier: Trump Hires Impeachment Lawyer Who Is… Competent???
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.