Three articles in our reading around the region seem to tie together.
In the first, Jonathan Ellis reported at the Sioux Falls Argus Leader in South Dakota is not following federal voter registration laws, judge rules:
A federal judge ruled Thursday that the South Dakota Secretary of State’s Office is not following federal laws requiring state agencies to make it easier to register to vote.
Judge Lawrence Piersol, of the United States District Court for the District of South Dakota, issued a wide-ranging opinion that sided with two South Dakota tribes, the Rosebud Sioux and the Oglala Sioux.
The tribes brought suit in 2020, arguing that the Secretary of State’s Office was not adequately addressing federal law. The National Voter Registration Act requires state agencies to help voters register to vote when they interact with government agencies for other services.
For example, voter registration opportunities must be provided under the act when people apply for drivers’ licenses, or apply for public assistance. When a person submits a change-of-address form for a driver’s license, the act provides that it should also serve as a change of address for voter registrations, at least when it comes to federal elections.
Licensing and public benefits are under the auspices of the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Social Services. Piersol found that the Secretary of State’s Office was not providing enough oversight to ensure those offices were fulfilling their responsibility under the act.
Piersol also found that the Department of Public Safety was responsible for transmitting voter registrations to the county auditor, but numerous errors were stopping that process from happening. Piersol also ruled that when the Department of Public Safety contracts with other government agencies to provide licensing services, the department is still obligated to comply with federal voter registration requirements. Such so-called “issue sites” include the office in Dupree, South Dakota in the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. . . .
Read the rest at the Argus Leader.
At the Rochester Post Bulletin, Molly Castle Work reported in How all-white juries taint confidence in Rochester and Minnesota's courts:
When Bud Whitehorn walked into the courtroom for his trial, no one on the jury looked like him.
It was the early 2000s and Whitehorn, a Rochester resident who identifies as African American, said every person in his Olmsted County jury pool was white except for one Hispanic man. And, he recalls, the Hispanic juror was later dismissed, leaving his fate to be decided by an all-white jury.
Whitehorn said he didn’t have any confidence in the system and considered pleading guilty to avoid a jury trial, but his attorney persuaded him to go through with the trial, confident that they could prove his innocence. Instead, the jury convicted Whitehorn.
More than a decade later, Whitehorn, who is now an ordained deacon and Rochester’s community liaison, said he still imagines what it would have been like if the jury had reflected his community — a true “jury of his peers.”
“Even if I was still found guilty, it would have felt so much better,” he said. “Would have felt like I had a fair shot.”
Whitehorn's experience is a common one. In the 2020 U.S. Census, nearly 4 in 10 Minnesotans are non-white. But the racial makeup of juries is nowhere near reflecting that level of diversity.
And not only is it a common phenomenon, it is one that has persisted for decades. The issue was acknowledged by the Minnesota court system as far back as the 1990s and again in 2021. Although the court made recommendations to improve the issue, a Post Bulletin investigation found that few solutions have been implemented and little to nothing has changed.
In 2022, people of color are still significantly underrepresented in Minnesota jury pools, according to an analysis of the latest available data by the Post Bulletin. Although U.S. law requires jury pools to represent a fair cross section of the community, people of color are less likely to make it into the jury pool compared to white residents, even though most defendants are people of color.
The jury selection process would appear to be race neutral — jury summons are sent to a random selection of people and, after questioning for potential bias, a 12-person jury is selected from the pool and sworn in. However, eight attorneys interviewed by the Post Bulletin said that these racial disparities in the jury box are baked into the system from the start. The master source list of all potential Minnesota jurors is compiled by merging voter registration records and drivers license logs (including state IDs) — two sources where white Minnesotans are more thoroughly represented than non-whites.
Jury service is also a financial burden for many, so some jurors are excluded due to financial hardship — an issue that affects people of color disproportionately compared to white people. In some Minnesota counties, the juror per diem rate doesn’t even cover the cost of parking.
Even if prospective jurors of color make it into the jury pool, they can be struck from the pool by lawyers who believe they will be less fair than others. These strikes are known as peremptory challenges and have received national criticism as a means of limiting jury diversity. Although Minnesota and federal law prohibits purposefully discriminating on the basis of race or gender in the exercise of peremptory challenges, the Equal Justice Initiative reported in 2021 that this issue persists across the country — many prosecutors “have been explicitly trained to provide ‘race-neutral’ reasons for strikes against people of color.”
Diverse juries don't just better reflect the state's changing population, evidence suggests that they also produce better, fairer outcomes. They spend more time on deliberations and make fewer factual errors, according to a 2006 study published by Stanford University. That's important because courts rely on public trust in the integrity of the justice process, but many defendants of color have little faith. This wavering confidence in the system has far-reaching effects — many of which percolate beyond the bounds of the courtroom.
“It erodes the justice system and the legal system as a whole,” said Angie Setzer, senior attorney at the Equal Justice Initiative. “Representative juries are so critical … to not just the outcomes of individual cases, but to our entire community's ability to have confidence in that system.” . . .
There's more in the subscribers' only story (though a subscription to one Forum News paper is a subscription to them all.
Our subscription (through the West Central Tribune) allows us to read the Mitchell Republic, where Hunter Dunteman reported Thursday in Watertown police investigating at least 50 anti-Semitic flyers, bags of rice distributed across town:
Police in Watertown are seeking information relating to anti-Semitic flyers distributed throughout town this week, an act officials call “disgusting” and “unacceptable.”
On Monday, the Watertown Police Department shared on their Facebook page that they’ve been receiving reports that citizens have discovered anti-Semitic flyers attached to bags on rice across the city.
The flyers include altered images that depict various politicians, executives and political journalists with Stars of David on their foreheads, accusing them of engaging in scandalous behavior. There is no evidence to corroborate any claims made by the flyers.
The Watertown Police Department has received roughly 50 reports of residents receiving these flyers, according to Captain Steve Rehorst, though it’s nearly impossible to know how many flyers were disposed of without residents making a report.
“Our thought on it is that obviously that behavior is unacceptable, and we don’t want to give it momentum,” Rehorst said. “We believe that anything like that is disgusting material and unacceptable.”
Rehorst said the flyers appear to be a part of a national campaign of hate, after flyers with similar sentiments were found in California during Passover. According to the Smithsonian Magazine, consuming rice during Passover had been banned for Ashkenazi Jews living outside of Israel since the 13th century, until the Jewish Conservative movement relaxed the restriction in 2016.
Though Rehorst is quick to speak against the sentiments shared by the flyers, he said the right to free speech places the Watertown Police Department in a bit of an awkward spot, as it doesn’t necessarily fall under South Dakota’s hate crime statute. . . .
It's disinformation of the sort a Minnesota Republican-endorsed Secretary of State candidate might love.
At Watertown Public Opinion, the local paper, Kerry Kulkarni reported on Tuesday in More than 150 pieces of anti-Semitic propaganda strewn throughout Watertown, police say:
At least 50 anti-Semitic flyers have been recovered by the Watertown Police Department and more than double that total have been found by citizens in town since Monday morning, according to information from police.
Around 7 a.m. Monday, the police department was alerted to bags of rice with anti-Semitic propaganda inside strewn throughout neighborhoods in Watertown. The bags were thrown along streets and into driveways, according to police.
Patrol Sgt. Scott Price of the Watertown Police Department said that this is the first time he has ever encountered anything like this in Watertown.
Depending on what is learned, violators could be charged with littering or a possible hate crime, Price said. There were no suspects as of Tuesday morning.
“This was unexpected and very much out of the blue. There are no notes (on the flyer) indicating who was responsible or what the purpose of this is,” he said.
People who find the flyers should call the police department at 605-882-6210.
The text of South Dakota's hate law crime follows.
No person may maliciously and with the specific intent to intimidate or harass any person or specific group of persons because of that person's or group of persons' race, ethnicity, religion, ancestry or national origin:
Recent Comments