NCJ Number
182323
Journal
Stanford Law Review Volume: 52 Issue: 4 Dated: April 2000 Pages: 809-871
Date Published
April 2000
Length
63 pages
Annotation
This discussion of law, violence, and community in the contemporary United States uses both jurisprudential and interdisciplinary materials to probe the sociolegal text and the historical context of racially motivated violence in two recent high-profile criminal trials in New York City and Texas.
Abstract
The discussion emphasizes that communities stuck by violence suffer profound loss, expressed in the destruction of public discourse, reason, and citizenship. The two trials were the Central Park jogger sexual assault trials in New York City in 1990-91 and the James Byrd murder trials in Jasper, Texas, in 1998-99. The analysis focuses on the nature of prosecutorial norms and narratives, their cultural and social significance, and their impact on interracial community. The analysis suggests the need to reform prosecutorial norms and narratives to reconstruct interracial community in the aftermath of violence motivated by race. The author argues that that prosecutors and prosecutorial policies of community activism may be helpful in reconciling segregated communities that are divided by racial violence. Therefore, the challenge for prosecutors in race cases is to overcome the burden of silencing tradition and to explore the discretionary freedom of reconstructing interracial community. Footnotes