Thread by @ScottHech

🚨 Across the country, courts are using COVID as excuse to perpetuate cruelty. Example: Trials suspended bc of claimed concern for jurors. Jailed awaiting trial indefinitely. But no concern for grand jurors forced to continue charging & caging people. More:taibbi.substack.com/p/s-t-public-d…

"Trials were suspended. This left a lot of people who couldn’t afford bail in a purgatory-like state of open-ended detention. However, official concern for jury safety seemed limited. Police continued to arrest people & prosecutors continued to use grand juries to indict."

“Speedy trial rules only worked in one direction. Officials basically said: 'Bc we’re still arresting people at same rates & need to keep prosecuting, we’re just going to have jurors risk their lives in a way we said we really cared about, to have them vote on new indictments.”

"In one particular jurisdiction — New Mexico’s 12th Judicial District— defendants at least for a time had the worst of all worlds: no jury trials, no preliminary hearings, and full steam ahead for grand jury indictments."

Public Defender Dayna Jones: "I just found it extraordinarily problematic & hypocritical that we were bringing people in for grand juries while we had no jury trials. We could indict somebody, but we couldn't acquit them. We couldn't get them in front of a jury for an acquittal."

This cynical use of COVID as an excuse to cage people for longer while bringing even more people into the system to cage, is just one of many, many examples of officials "using the disease to tilt the field in their favor."

In Oakland, courts are trying to use COVID to institute a change that would open the jury pool for cases involving Oakland defendants to all of Alameda County (effectively, this would put more black defendants in front of more white jurors).mercurynews.com/2020/12/29/ala…

Thanks to Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) for lifting up this story & others as part of his aptly-named, ongoing series: "Shit public defenders see." Turns out, we see a lot of shit. Another: People in PG County, MD jail authorized for release, but still being held:taibbi.substack.com/p/what-public-…