NYT: Without Jury, Judge Warned [in 2012] That Stop-and-Frisk Ruling Would Be Disputed

NYT: Without Jury, Judge Warned That Stop-and-Frisk Ruling Would Be Disputed by Benjamin Weiser and Joseph Goldstein:

With the trial over the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practices just months away, Judge Shira A. Scheindlin expressed concern at the decision by the lawyers who had filed the suit to have her, not a jury, decide the case.

“It’s not the preferable route,” the judge said from the bench in a little-noticed court hearing in late 2012, “because whatever the outcome, the criticism will be, ‘This is one person.’”

She seemed to believe that a jury of New Yorkers was best to decide the volatile issue of whether the department’s practice violated the Constitution. The ruling of a single judge, she said, would be attacked as “not a verdict of the community.”