One of the top lawyers on former President Donald Trump’s legal team, now dissolved for his second impeachment trial, had a history of using racial stereotypes to remove black citizens from the jury.
The lawyer in question, Greg Harris, of South Carolina, was one of the top four lawyers who were part of Trump’s second impeachment legal team. The team of lawyers left abruptly on Saturday, with just over a week to go before the trial.
Harris – who confirmed his appointment to the Associated Press last Thursday – gave racial stereotypes as a justification for removing a judge who went so far as to say that they “moved and jumped” as they walked. A revealing adjustment for a president who called white supremacists “good people” and shouted at the Proud Boys, a well-known hate group, during recent presidential debates.
In 1989, when Harris served as an assistant attorney for the Fifth Circuit Circuit Attorney’s Office, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that Harris used racist stereotypes against two black jurors in a DUI case.
The defendant’s lawyer in the DUI case, Phillip Mace, said HuffPost during the two trials, 9 out of 10 blows used by Harris were against potential jurors who were black.
Mace remembered Harris’s response to him. He said:
“When I asked him about it, Greg said he didn’t have a racist or [discriminatory] bone in your body. I remember this.”
In this case, Harris assaulted a black man in the jury pool because he said he walked slowly, spoke softly and was older. When assaulting another potential juror in the same case, Harris told the judge that it was because the man was unemployed, disinterested and “shucked and jived “.
Harris stated:
“I watched him as he walked from the jury panel to the microphone and noticed that he – he shucked and jived is what I did. This is just my analysis of how he got up here. “
After the trial court failed to substantiate Harris’s claim by displaying a pattern of racial prejudice, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled in the case by calling the use of Harris’ racial stereotypes “problematic. “
The South Carolina Supreme Court said in the decision:
“The trial court did not investigate or comment on the prosecutor’s explanation that the juror was assaulted because he ‘shook and shook’. The use of this racial stereotype is evidence of the prosecutor’s subjective intention to discriminate. ”
Mace applauded the Supreme Court’s decision saying it initiated a “radical change” in a state with a history of violent racism.
Twitter users were not surprised by Trump’s choice of Harris for his legal team.
Greg Harris had not responded to requests for comment at the time of this writing.
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