Nov 2, 2005 10:42 pm US/Central
Trial Observers Question 'Biases' In Vang Trial
St. Paul (AP) ―
A group that sent observers to the trial of a Hmong man convicted of killing six hunters in Wisconsin released a report Wednesday saying "structural biases" in the court and media diminished the chances for justice in the case.
The group, the Coalition for Community Relations, didn't challenge the verdict handed down Sept. 16 against Chai Soua Vang.
However, it said there may have been biases in the way the jury was selected and in the media's coverage of the trial. The group also questioned the brevity of the weeklong trial and the three-hour jury deliberations that led to the verdict.
Pakou Hang, a founder of the organization who presented the report at Concordia University here, said its intent was to "spur dialogue about what it means for minorities to get a fair trial in the U.S."
Vang, a truck driver from St. Paul, was convicted by an all-white jury of six counts of first-degree intentional homicide and three counts of attempted homicide. The killings happened last November after the hunters confronted Vang and accused him of trespassing. Vang, at his trial, claimed that he shot in self-defense after one hunter used racial slurs and another fired at him.
The two-dozen observers looked at the audience, the jurors, the defendant and key courtroom personnel, examining the demeanors of people in each category, their racial makeup and other factors.
Among its specific observations, the group argued that the media should have explained the possibility of interpretation error when Vang said in court that some of the hunters "deserved" to die. The report said the Hmong lexicon has three ways to express the word "deserve" that slightly differ. Just one article about the trial raised the issue of interpretation, the report said.
Kelly Kennedy, a spokesman for Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, defended the composition of the jury, noting it was drawn from more diverse Dane County instead of Sawyer County. As for the time it took the jury to render verdicts, he said: "The way the case progressed, I don't think the jury needed a whole lot of deliberation to decide he was guilty on the counts."
Kennedy also dismissed concerns that the case was about race.
"I think what this case showed was it was an individual who had an anger problem. He reacted violently and the race issue really isn't there. It's an individual that has a history of anger issues, and that will come out in sentencing."
Jonathan Smith, one of Vang's attorneys, said the defense team "put on the case that we felt was available to us. ... We put in the case that we felt we could with what we had," he said.
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