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But a study ordered in 2005 by Judge Nancy Gertner (D. Mass.) found that wealthier towns with few minority residents did a better job of keeping accurate residency lists than more diverse communities. The result: a higher percentage of jury summonses sent to minorities came back as undeliverable or went unanswered.

“The perception of fairness counts. A white jury may be fair, but a non-white defendant likely will think ‘the jurors can’t be fair because they don’t understand me.’”

An understanding of personal choice is commonly based in a conception of rationality or rational choice

he central points of this theory are: (1) The human being is a rational actor, (2) Rationality involves an end/means calculation, (3) People (freely) choose all behavior, both conforming and deviant, based on their rational calculations, (4) The central element of calculation involves a cost benefit analysis: Pleasure versus Pain, (5) Choice, with all other conditions equal, will be directed towards the maximization of individual pleasure, (6) Choice can be controlled through the perception and understanding of the potential pain or punishment that will follow an act judged to be in violation of the social good, the social contract, (7) The state is responsible for maintaining order and preserving the common good through a system of laws (this system is the embodiment of the social contract), (8) The Swiftness, Severity, and Certainty of punishment are the key elements in understanding a law's ability to control human behavior.

Years from now, when socialist historians of the future examine the dead carcass of US capitalism, they will pay special attention to the growing barbarism of the penal system in the late 20th century. While most attention will obviously be paid to the reintroduction of the death penalty and a racist judicial system that incarcerates minorities disproportionately, there will also have to be close look at the tendency to treat mentally ill people as common criminals.

The insanity defense was first used in the case of an 1843 assassination attempt on British Prime Minister Robert Peel by a psychotic individual named Daniel M'Naghten. When a physician testified that M'Naghten was insane, the prosecution agreed to stop the case and the defendant was declared insane despite protests from Queen Victoria and the House of Lords.

g Smith and Hickock: namely, a complete disregard for human life. Each man knows that society says it is wrong to kill another person, but they simply do not care. Capote insinuates that this lack of compassion for others is itself a type of insanity.

"Smith, in his confusion, jealousy, anger, disappointment - and spite - reactively and instinctively thrust that hunting knife into Herbert Clutter's throat (Smith may also simultaneously have been displacing his anger onto the victim, thereby symbolically killing his feckless paramour).

In Cold Blood is particularly noted for Capote's subtle insights into the ambiguities of the American legal system and of capital punishment.

Hickock is extroverted, resourceful, and “manly.” “Dick’s literalness,” the reader is told, “his pragmatic approach to every subject,

was the primary reason Perry had been attracted to him, for it made Dick seem, compared to himself, so authentically tough, invulnerable, ‘totally masculine.’”

Capote became especially close to Smith, whose lonely childhood, physical self-consciousness, and artistic aspirations resonated with the writer.