quote:Originally posted by DustinDopps: Gaal - As part of the legal process, both sides have to have the same information available to them before trial. The defendant *has* to show up to the deposition and answer questions, even if those answers are all "No comment" or "I don't know."
Thanks.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, tell me if you think I'm way off. But could it be the prosecutor was purposefully trying to get those reactions out of Bieber to show him as a spoiled, condescending celebrity so that when the trial begins a jury has less, if any, sympathy for him? In other words, maybe it wasn't information he was looking for, it was the footage of him acting that way to get a leg up on the trial.
The jury is not necessarily privy to the taped deposition- that is rarely the case in my understanding. These are facts either stipulated to or ruled inadmissible to the court proceedings.
So for example, if the prosecutor asked Bieber, while deposing him, if he is cheating on his girlfriend, and Bieber said yes, that still doesn't mean the prosecutor gets to bring that information in front of the jury, as it is prejudicial, and not relevant to the case. The judge would rule on that before the jury ever heard the case. This is why, for example, it can happen that a jury decides a case not knowing many things about a defendant's life that might influence their decisions, because it is not deemed relevant to their judgement in the case before them. Then these things could later be brought in as part of the sentencing hearings.
quote:
quote:Originally posted by Aros: I don't think many people will posit that we're "color blind" in the US.
Oh, on the contrary. I think many people would posit exactly this. However, most if not all of them would be mostly wrong, and most would not even realize why that is.
quote: And what behavior is considered racist? What I mean: I imagine there are black neighborhoods 80% where or more population is black. Crime rate is 300% of any other neighborhood in that given city. (I of course imagine that there most probably are white neighborhoods with 100% white population and twice that crime rate, it's just an example).
Don't get hung up on what "racism," means in this context.
The issue is that racist beliefs, the literal basis of racism, are logically fallacious arguments about the nature of people based on their ethnic, genetic predispositions. These understandings of how people are wired based on their race are demonstrably wrong. Black people are not predisposed to violence, nor, to that matter, to athleticism. Asians are not predisposed to good grades and bad driving, and white people are not predisposed to business acumen and democracy. These are fallacies of observation bias.
However, it is not fallacious reasoning that leads a person to fear the site of a black teenager in a high crime neighborhood. This is social conditioning, on the part btw, of both the observer *and* the observed party. The white person (or black person) who sees a black teenager in a high-crime neighborhood is conditioned to believe the teenager is dangerous. The teenager is likewise probably conditioned to be more dangerous than the average person. That is not a phenomenon that is engrained in race, but in economic and social systems that shape the experiences and behaviors of all involved.
And it's an important point to keep in mind: multiple studies of the phenomenon have shown that black police officers are about as likely as white police officers to profile black subjects as violent risks, and to be less likely to do so for white subjects. This is evidence of powerful social conditioning, as even black officers who are members of black communities are still likely to be more vigilant of black people than white people. This is a product of media, films, television, and culture in general. It is reinforced by itself: perceptions of black people as violent and dangerous lead to social ostracism and only exacerbate the alienation from mainstream society that black people experience, leading to reinforcement of the stereotype. S
ociety, in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways, enforces its perceptions of people by demanding that they act in their assigned roles. Transgression from those roles is often met with subtle criticism, from within and without- a black person who "acts white," is a race-traitor to black people, and a poseur to white people. Just think about the endless suspicion of Barack Obama by hard-core conservatives. There's a deep suspicion of a black person who transgresses "his place," in society by rising higher than expected.
So, in sum: racism is believing that neighborhoods are high-crime *because* black people live in them. The fact that they are black being the basis of the belief. Not-racism is believing that a black neighborhood is more dangerous, because it probably is. While this latter form of non-racism is still *prejudice,* it is not necessarily prejudice based on fallacious reasoning.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, tell me if you think I'm way off. But could it be the prosecutor was purposefully trying to get those reactions out of Bieber to show him as a spoiled, condescending celebrity so that when the trial begins a jury has less, if any, sympathy for him? In other words, maybe it wasn't information he was looking for, it was the footage of him acting that way to get a leg up on the trial.
As Orincoro said, the deposition isn't usually used as evidence in the trial. It's sort of a fishing expedition for the attorneys.
I didn't get the impression that the attorney was trying to make Bieber look bad. He was asking some pretty basic questions and Bieber was ridiculing him for it and being highly uncooperative.
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