The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 was passed in reaction to events like the Memphis riot of 1866, where policemen were not tried for shooting and beating local blacks. As a result, they raise serious questions of double jeopardy. But in practice, defendants are being forced to run the same gauntlet twice for essentially the same conduct. This should make civil libertarian knees jerk. Janet Reno, for example, was on the verge of rejecting civil rights charges in the Crown Heights case until she was lobbied by New York Representative Charles Schumer.
Jurors are no less immune to political pressure.
Interviews with those on the panel for the second King trial suggest they were painfully aware of the public support for convictions, and took it upon themselves to play the role of civic peacemakers. By making every crime a potential bias crime, the Justice Department also threatens to stretch the meaning of civil rights laws beyond the point of coherence. If the attorney general's goal is to second-guess lawless and arbitrary jury verdicts, then there is no principled way for her to distinguish the acquittal of Rosenbaum's murderers from the acquittal of Meir Kahane's murderers, who were brought up on civil rights charges in August. But it strains credibility to pretend that Rosenbaum's assailant, Lemrick Nelson, was part of a conspiracy to deprive Rosenbaum of his right to vote or to testify at a trial. Denny's assailants, by contrast, could more plausibly be charged with a conspiracy to deny the truck-driver's right to use the public highways.