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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   37613 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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My state's supreme court has held that invocation of racist stereotypes, such as suggesting that a person is looking for a windfall, or that a person's employer may not be an unbiased witness, is always grounds for a hearing for a new trial, and at the hearing the burden is on the other party to prove that race was not a factor in the jury's decision.

There are no bounds on this, so if the matter in question happens to be whether a Chinese man peed in your Coke, he'll always be entitled to a new trial based on descriptions of his actual behavior.

https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/976724.pdf

Henderson moved for a new trial or additur on the ground that the repeated appeals to racial bias affected the verdict, yet the trial court did not even grant an evidentiary hearing on that motion. The court instead stated it could not “require attorneys to refrain from using language that is tied to the evidence in the case, even if in some contexts the language has racial overtones.” 1 Clerk’s Papers (CP) at 180-81.

That reasoning gets it exactly backward. In ruling on a motion for a new civil trial, “[t]he ultimate question for the court is whether an objective observer (one who is aware that implicit, institutional, and unconscious biases, in addition to purposeful discrimination, have influenced jury verdicts in Washington State) could view race as a factor in the verdict.” State v. Berhe, 193 Wn.2d 657, 665, 444 P.3d 1172 (2019). A trial court must hold a hearing on a new trial motion when the proponent makes a prima facie showing that this objective observer could view race as a factor in the verdict, regardless of whether intentional misconduct has been shown or the court believes there is another explanation. At that hearing, the party seeking to preserve the verdict bears the burden to prove that race was not a factor.

...

During closing arguments, Thompson’s counsel alluded to racist stereotypes about Black women as untrustworthy and motivated by the desire to acquire an unearned financial windfall. Defense counsel argued that Henderson’s injuries were minimal and intimated that the sole reason she had proceeded to trial was that she saw the collision as an opportunity for financial gain. Id. at 1195 (“And it seems pretty evident that the reason we’re going through this exercise is because the ask is for three and a half million dollars.”), 1198 (arguing that Henderson did not inform one of her doctors about the collision soon enough “because $3.5 million hadn’t coalesced in her mind yet”). Defense counsel’s argument that Henderson was exaggerating or fabricating her injuries appealed to these negative and false stereotypes about Black women being untrustworthy, lazy, deceptive, and greedy.

...defense counsel argued that Henderson’s chiropractor was likely to lie for her because they had more than just a doctor-patient relationship, implying that hiring her to work in his office demonstrated impropriety in their relationship. This strategy could open the door to speculation that plays directly on prejudice or biases about race and sexuality.

Minor note: for me "to go Dutch" means to split the bill, not to avoid paying. I guess in the sense of date your phrasing fits too.

I am guessing you are quite tall and like bicycling and ice skating on canals. In many parts of the world, the expectation is that one party pays for entertainment. Only in the Netherlands, and among horrible people elsewhere, is there an expectation that a bill will be split. This seems weird, but it possibly dates back to gift culture. I know that staying for dinner is a horrible faux pas in the Netherlands while it is utterly expected in other places. Many cultures make a huge effort to be hospitable to others, with crazy gift cultures, always bringing food to an event, always buying rounds of drinks, and other patterns like this. The Dutch really are out of step with most places, especially outside Hajnal line North Western Europe.

Bill splitting is quite common in the US (and the phrase "going dutch" obsolete).

Wew that decision is something

[B]lack

we vacated convictions after a prosecutor repeatedly invoked negative

stereotypes about Latinx people

These people of Law are getting scary.

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