Federal prosecutors are trying to make inappropriate points about race and class in a jury questionnaire, Mayor Frank Melton's attorney John Reeves argued Tuesday. Responding to the government's list of proposed questions for potential jurors, Reeves said that prosecutors were trying to elicit sympathy for Evans Welch and Jennifer Sutton. Melton is scheduled to be re-tried May 11 on charges that he violated Welch and Sutton's civil rights in a Sept. 2006 raid on a Ridgeway Street duplex.
Prosecutors submitted a list (PDF) of 41 additional jury questions to the court on Tuesday. Among those questions were a series focusing on racial discrimination, such as:
"How much discrimination do you believe exists today in Mississippi against blacks?"
Reeves filed a response (PDF) objecting to those questions later that day. He argued that they would "inject race directly into the case and suggest that racial disparity or negative race relations could be an issue in the case."
Prosecutors also want to ask potential jurors' about their attitudes toward class, including whether they believe the justice system should treat poor people and wealthier people equally, despite differences in the prevalence of crime in their respective neighborhoods.
In his response, Reeves said that the questions about socioeconomic status "suggest that Mr. Welch and Ms. Sutton…are somehow victims because they may be ‘poor' and disconnected."
"That sympathy should be shown for them is implied," Reeves wrote. "These questions cast the case as rich vs. poor, which is inaccurate and inappropriate."
During Melton's first federal trial, which ended in a hung jury on Feb. 24, lead prosecutor Mark Blumberg alluded to the difference in status between Melton and the duplex's owner and tenant. The Constitution protects all of them equally, he said, during his closing argument.
"It's not just the rich and the powerful who are entitled to those rules and protections," Blumberg told jurors. "It's the Sutton's, the Welch's."
Reeves has also joined Cynthia Stewart, attorney for Melton's co-defendant and former bodyguard Michael Recio, in demanding access to Department of Justice documents.
In that previous motion (PDF), defense attorneys asserted that the government's re-trying of their clients violates its own policy for avoiding wasteful, successive prosecutions for the same crime. Any memos detailing the government's rationale for prosecution could exculpate their clients, they argue.
On Tuesday, prosecutors filed a response (PDF) to Reeves and Stewart's motion. They pointed out that they had followed internal policy by getting the approval of the Assistant Attorney General. In addition, they argued, defense attorneys did not know if any of the documents they requested would actually prove exculpatory. The defense could not "conduct a fishing expedition into the basis for the government's prosecution," prosecutors said.
Judge Dan Jordan has not ruled on either motion.
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