Siegelman, Scrushy play the race card

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Attorneys for Richard Scrushy tried Monday to scuttle an indictment against him, former Gov. Don Siegelman and two former Siegelman aides by arguing that blacks are underrepresented in pools of potential jurors in Montgomery's federal courts. ...

Wanda Robinson, former jury administrator for the federal courts in Montgomery, testified Monday that the 23 counties in the federal courts' Middle District of Alabama are 30 percent black, and the pool of qualified jurors from those counties is 21 percent black.

Prosecutors say that is within the 10 percentage points allowed by law.

But Scrushy's attorneys said they see problems with the calculations. They also argued that the pool of potential jurors included more whites than it should have because of errors in the way people excused from jury duty were added back into the pool of potential jurors once the reason for their excuse — such as a vacation or illness — ended.

Let me get this straight. According to Scrushy's attorneys, the pool of potential jurors for the Middle District isn't sufficiently representative of the district's black population for a fair trial to be held. Wouldn't the same be true for any trial held in the Middle District? Scrushy and Siegelman are effectively saying that the wheels of justice must grind to a halt, all because of their insistence on an arbitrary racial quota. This is an insult to the justice system and to people of every race - the underlying premise being that - you know - those people...they all think alike.