Can African-Americans Now Truly Believe in Judicial Fairness?
With her astounding decision that the killing of Latasha Harlins warranted not a single day of jail, Judge Joyce A. Karlin is destined to become the Anita Faye Hill of the California judiciary, with a stunned public forever wondering what motivated her in the most public controversy of her career. There the similarity ends. Hill, whose testimony highlighted an important issue, put her personal reputation and professional future on the line for a cause she believed in. Karlin, who has retreated behind a cloak of silence and “judicial discretion,” only succeeded in throwing a city into turmoil. Drafted into duty as Karlin’s “shovel brigade,” Los Angeles’ political and legal leaders and the African-American and Korean-American communities must now trail her parade of insensitivity and arrogance with the unpleasant task of cleaning up the mess.
