Bayzle Morgan, 24, is accused of stealing a man’s motorcycle at gunpoint in Las Vegas, Nevada.
He has tattoos on his head, face and neck, which include the words ‘Baby Nazi’, a swastika and an Iron Cross.
A panel of potential jurors allegedly said they wouldn’t be able to treat Morgan’s case fairly because of the markings, prompting a district judge to require them to be covered.
Morgan showed up in court on Monday covered in concealer – and when his attorney said the make-up had started wearing off, the judge agreed to delay jury selection.
Morgan is to remove the make-up after each day in court before he returns to the Clark County Detention Center.Potential jurors didn’t appear to see Morgan’s tattoos underneath the concealer on Monday, but one of his attorneys, Dan Bunin, said in the early afternoon that two of them had started showing up.
One was the ‘Baby Nazi’ inscription on Morgan’s neck and the other was a teardrop tattoo below his right eye.
Teardrop tattoos can have several meanings. Some signal that the wearer has killed someone, has been in prison, or was part of a gang.
District Judge Richard Scotti allowed a cosmetologist to touch up Morgan’s makeup, delaying jury selection by 30 minutes Monday.
The make-up artist recommended he wear a brown shirt instead of a white or black white for future court dates.
So I guess all we need to do is have someone cover us in white face and there’s a chance we will get a fair trial or lenient sentence in court.
I guess it would be a lot easier to just get a police officer Halloween costume.
…what about people that are unattractive? What if they get convicted at higher rates? What about people with constant resting bitch face? What about diminutive people? What about people with non-nazi tattoos which may sway the jury? Finally, and most relevant, what about black people, who there is a proven bias against that is widespread and subconscious? If we’re covering tattoos, then we MUST go whole hog and do blind trials otherwise not everyone is being treated equally under the law (being afforded the same ability to have a bias-less trial) and therefore violating their 6th amendment constitutional right to “an impartial jury of the state”. So, I hope some prominent black lawyer is about to file a lawsuit against the state.
