Posted on

Julian Assange: ‘A lot more material’ coming on US elections

Hillary Clinton

By Matthew Chance, CNN

Updated 4:16 PM ET, Tue July 26, 2016

(CNN)Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said Tuesday his whistleblowing website might release “a lot more material” relevant to the US electoral campaign.

Assange was speaking in a CNN interview following the release of nearly 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee by suspected Russian hackers.

However, Assange refused to confirm or deny a Russian origin for the mass email leak, saying Wikileaks tries to create ambiguity to protect all its sources.

“Perhaps one day the source or sources will step forward and that might be an interesting moment some people may have egg on their faces. But to exclude certain actors is to make it easier to find out who our sources are,” Assange told CNN.

The Kremlin has rejected allegations its behind the hacking, calling suggestions it ordered the release of the emails to influence US politics the “usual fun and games” of the US election campaigns.
“This is not really good for bilateral relations,” Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, added.

https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/26/politics/julian-assange-dnc-email-leak-hack/

Posted on

Juror bias ruling in N.J. strikes chord

12 Angry Men

SEPTEMBER 13, 2015, 11:13 PM    LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2015, 12:35 AM
BY KIBRET MARKOS AND SALVADOR RIZZO
STAFF WRITERS |
THE RECORD

A state appeals court ruling that directs judges in criminal trials to immediately remove jurors who display any racial bias is likely to reverberate through the jury selection process, Bergen and Passaic county judges and lawyers said.

The ruling exhorts New Jersey judges to probe deeper when questioning potential jurors about their views on race, and to treat with more scrutiny attitudes and opinions they previously might have viewed more benignly.

But experts say the task is complicated by the fact that the adversarial legal system encourages prosecutors and defense attorneys to try to fill the panel with jurors sympathetic to their causes — an attempt often based on the prospective jurors’ backgrounds, beliefs or racial identities. The ruling offers no advice for how judges can better detect subconscious prejudice, one Bergen County criminal defense lawyer said.

The strongly worded ruling, issued Aug. 31 by Appellate Division Judge Jose L. Fuentes, reversed the carjacking conviction of two black men in Union County, finding that the trial judge erred by failing to remove a juror who had expressed racial bias.

Fuentes wrote that just as the “hateful practice” of police racial profiling on New Jersey highways has been roundly condemned and outlawed, judges should be uncompromising in preventing people from serving on juries if those people associate criminal behavior with race.

https://www.northjersey.com/news/juror-bias-ruling-in-n-j-strikes-chord-1.1409236