Ignoramuses Need Apply

Trayvon Martin
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

We mentioned earlier today that one of the jurors on the Zimmerman jury has already signed on with a literary agent to sell her book about being a juror on the trial – in other words less than 36 hours after the end of case. Presumably – hopefully – she wasn’t in contact with the agent prior to the verdict. But that turnaround leaves little question that she was planning on writing a book at least during the time she was deliberating.

But there are some other reasons to wonder why she got on the jury, particularly why the prosecutors let her on the jury.

Juror B37 hates the media and thinks all reporting is biased. She doesn’t listen to the radio or read the Internet but rather gets all her news from the Today show. She also repeatedly referred to the riots that broke out in Sanford after Martin was killed. Of course, there were no riots after Martin was killed.

In other words, juror B37 is not only ignorant but militantly ignorant.

As for Martin’s death she called it “an unfortunate incident that happened” and referred to him as a “boy of color”, though it’s not clear that this wasn’t an admittedly clumsy way to use the ‘person of color’ formulation rather than some hint of racial bias.

As Dahlia Lithwick notes in Slate, in isolation, it’s impossible to judge why one side or the other in a case did or didn’t strike a potential juror. One juror may suck, or seem biased against your side. But another one might be worse. Still, if I were the prosecution, I feel like I would have found a way to strike this woman from the list.

Latest Editors' Blog
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: