Skelton: No reason to place noncitizens on juries
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In California, some bills move so quickly through the Legislature, no one has a chance to completely understand their potential impact.
A measure that would allow noncitizens to serve on juries is one of those bills, George Skelton says in his Thursday column.
Supporters have painted the issue as a matter of discrimination -- why bar legal immigrants, they say, from participating in an important part of American civic life?
But Skelton says there’s no good reason to extend the responsibility to noncitizens.
“You must be a citizen to be eligible to serve in the Legislature and write the laws. You have to be a citizen to be a governor who signs the laws. And you have to be a citizen to vote and elect the lawmakers,” he writes.
Skelton adds, “It seems incongruous to allow noncitizens to determine whether a defendant has broken a law.”
All of Skelton’s columns are here.
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