The color of the law

摘要

In 1991, a visiting Jewish scholar, Yankel Rosenbaum, was fatally stabbed in Brooklyn by a black mob outraged that a black youngster had been run over and killed by a religious Jewish motorcade. Rosenbaum lived long enough to identify Lemrick Nelson Jr. as the stabber, but a largely black jury did not convict Nelson. Later, some jury members went partying with Nelson to celebrate the acquittal. Nelson subsequently moved to Georgia, where he was convicted of slashing a schoolmate. At the time, it appeared to be an act of race-based jury nullification, and, though the word didn't pop up, it was clear that something very unusual had occurred and that many of the city's Jews had suddenly withdrawn their faith in the local criminal justice system.