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Originally Posted by Kevin
I do think that facts and actions can be looked at in a vacuum.
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I completely understand and agree to some extent. Many attorneys, judges, and others involved in the criminal justice and legal realms say this. That is often considered intentionally surface-level as to only focus on legal factors. However, it is also considered extremely difficult and some would argue impossible considering this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin
Of course, when I do something like counsel a black client on taking a plea vs. trial, I'm not an idiot. Race is going to be a factor whether he's innocent or guilty.
The challenge attorneys have to overcome is to not make that recommendation because of our own prejudices, but to be realistic about the sort of jury you're going to pick, i.e., likely to be all white folks with driver's licenses who were unresourceful enough not to get out of jury duty.
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The legal factors are what they are but most remain correlated with extralegal factors. Attorneys, judges, jurors, etc can attempt to control for extralegal factors (
hence some studies consistently finding minimal variation in legal outcomes for the same offense across race and socioeconomic status) but only within reason.