In case you were thinking of trying unabashed racism as your get-out-of-jury-duty card, don’t. In a questionnaire to select jurors for the death-penalty trial of Bonanno crime boss Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano, juror No. 799 decided to disparage minority groups and then the cops, in what we hope was an attempt to get dismissed. The potential juror, an Asian woman in her twenties who works in the garment industry, wrote in that the three people she least admired were “African-Americans, Hispanics and Haitians,” later telling the judge, “You always hear about them in the news doing something.” When the judge saw that she had a relative in the Chinese Ghost Shadows gang in prison for murder, he quipped, “Why didn’t you put ‘Asians’ down also?” She responded, “Maybe I should have.” “This is an outrage, and so are you!” said Judge Nicholas Garaufis, who denied prosecutors requests for dismissal and sentenced her to jury duty instead “She’s coming back [today], Thursday, and Friday — and until the future, when I am ready to dismiss her.” Judge Garaufis, 1. Defendants with this woman on the jury, 0.
Judge gives ‘Juror No. 799’ indefinite jury duty after she makes racist remarks on questionnaire [NYDN]
