Grassley Must Go

One Iowa Senator is retiring, and it is the wrong one. Chuck Grassley just did an unforgivable disservice to Iowans in his comments on why he was one of 22 Senators (all Republican men) who did not vote for the Violence Against Women Act.  Grassley contended that Native Americans aren’t capable of holding fair trials.

Since the Constitution guarantees citizens the right to a trial among a jury of peers, Grassley reasoned that white men would be deprived of their rights if those who were accused of violence against Native American women had to appear in a tribal court. “On an Indian reservation, it’s going to be made up of Indians, right?” Grassley said. “So the non-Indian doesn’t get a fair trial.”

There is actually no requirement that juries reflect “society as a whole.” So Grassley doesn’t know or doesn’t understand the Constitution. The Sixth Amendment requires juries to be drawn from the “State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed,” and Supreme Court decisions establish that criminal defendants also have a right to a jury which is"drawn from a fair cross section of the community” where the trial court convenes to hear their case. But this does not entitle anyone to be tried by a jury that reflects the whole of American society.

A person who is tried in western Iowa, where Senator Grassley resides, is likely to have an all-white jury, because over 91 percent of the Iowa population is white, whiter still as you move west of Des Moines. Similarly, a person who commits a crime in the Navajo Nation will face a jury of Native Americans because the population of the local community is made up of Navajo people. There is no reason to believe that Navajo jurors are any less impartial than white Iowans, and Grassley is wrong to suggest otherwise. Worse yet, if he believes he is right, then he must also believe that whites can not give a non-white a fair trial. In that case, he is at least wrong in not advocating for what he would see as a fair jury for his non-white constituents. No matter how you look at it, he looks bad.

Grassley went to great lengths to tell attendees of the town hall meeting that he had supported VAWA in the past. “I support 98 percent of what’s in the bill,” he said. If it weren’t for his belief that Native Americans’ are incapable of conducting a fair trial, perhaps he would have voted for it again.