Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Judge Orders Neo-Nazi To Cover Tattoos To Prevent Jury Bias" video.

  1. No, she's dead on here. The bottom line is that the perception affects everything that the jurors think when they're weighing the evidence. There's practical reasons why we don't usually require defendants to cover themselves up, it isn't necessarily possible to cover all things like that up. But, in this case, the tattoos are not relevant to the question of whether or not the defendant is guilty and as such they should be covered during the phase where the trial is determining guilt. If he's convicted and they start considering the penalties involved with the conviction, that's the time where seeing the tattoos might be relevant. The unfortunate truth here is that our reaction to tattoos like that happens at a very low level and it's not easily ignored. The defendant has a right to a jury trial and as a society we aren't well served sending people who aren't guilty to prison. If he's guilty and convicted and we cover up the tattoos then we can be reasonably certain that justice was done. If the tattoos aren't covered up, then we'll never really know how much of an impact they had. I've been a juror and no matter how hard you try to keep that sort of stuff out of your mind, it's going to color how you weigh the evidence to some extent. Especially if it's something like Neo-Nazi tattoos.
    1