In a civilized country, there would have been no trial, becauserna hoodlum like Mr. King would have been flushed outrnof the social system long before he began experimenting withrnthe use of the automobile as a deadly weapon.rnIf the first trial represented an attempt to dismantle thernliving wall that protects Los Angeles, the second is an inquisitionrnthat reminds us that American citizens no longer havernany protection against a tyrannical government. Most of thernprotections extended by the Bill of Rights have long sincernbeen taken away by one or another branch of government,rnusually by turning the amendments on their head.rnFreedom of religion, for example, now means that the governmentsrnthat take money from Christians do not allow thosernsame Christians to talk about their religion on the publicrnproperty they have paid for. Freedom from search and seizurerndoes not apply, it seems, either to the IRS or to state highwayrnpatrols running routine checks, and the Fifth Amendment’srnguarantee that no one “shall be compelled in any criminalrncase to be a witness against himself” is waived in child-abuserncases, along with the Common Law principle that a wife cannotrnbe made to testify against her husband.rnThe amendment’s other stipulation, that no one shall “bernsubject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of lifernor limb,” is so sacred a part of the Common Law that in 1817rnan accused rapist/murderer successfully demanded the right torntrial by battle, when, by a legal technicality, he was forced tornplead a second time, after he had been acquitted by a jury.rnEven before the trial, the newspapers had found the defendantrnguilty, and when the jury swiftly acquitted him, one newspaperrnthreatened mob violence: “The Law may acquit thernoffender but thank God it is the Law only.”rnAfter a bit of digging into legal history, someone discoveredrnan obscure statute of 1488 giving the murder victim’s nextrnof kin the right to appeal in a civil action. The defendant’srnlawyer countered with a surprise move: a challenge to trial byrnbattle. The appeal was dropped when the young woman’srnbrother declined to pick up the gauntlet from the courtroomrnfloor. In response to the legal shenanigans used by both sides,rnparliament passed a law outlawing both appeals and trial byrnbattle. Lord Eldon, that great conservative, commented in thernHouse of Lords that “it was a great absurdity that a man whornhad been acquitted by the unanimous opinion of a jur^ shouldrnagain be put in jeopardy of his life, provided any person, standingrnin a certain degree of relationship to the deceased, thoughtrnproper to proceed against him bv civil suit.”rnLord Eldon’s argument is directed not against kinship per sernbut against the use of a civil action to evade the prohibitionrnagainst double jeopardy. In other words, changing the namerndoes not alter the thing. The most common exception tornthe double jeopard)’ rule occurs in cases where a convictionrnhas been appealed and a higher court finds grounds to imposerna stiffer penalty. In Los Angeles, however, the officers arernbeing tried for exactly the same acts for which they have alreadyrnbeen tried. If there is any difference, it is that therncharges have been lowered rather than raised. Presumably, itrnis still a more serious crime to batter a man than to infringe hisrncivil rights. If they are innocent of the original charges, that isrnif they were only doing their duty, how can their legitimate actionsrnconstitute a deprivation of civil rights?rnBy the same token, a man acquitted of shoplifting might bernprosecuted for theft or for illegally removing merchandisernwithout the owner’s permission. Of course this logic is onlyrnemployed when a white is accused of doing something to arnnonwhite. In general today, any white man, if acquitted ofrnrobbery, might be tried a second time if his alleged victimrnwere black. Where the victims belong to protected minorityrngroups, white Americans are, apparently, guilty until proved innocent,rnand their guilt is aggravated by the racial difference.rnIn fact, this is the very logic of all the hate crimes legislationrnthat has recently been enacted in such states as Wisconsinrnand Massachusetts. Break a window and you pay a fine inrnBoston, but if at the same time you shout “nigger” or “gook”rnor “spic,” you go automatically to jail.rnStatus has made its inevitable return to the American legalrnsystem. It was inevitable, because wherever two distinctrnethnic groups have coexisted within the same territory, one orrnthe other group has imposed a second-class status upon thernother. I say coexist, because there are alternatives. The Anglo-rnSaxon invaders, by practicing a mixture of genocide and expulsionrnagainst the Celtic Britons, solved their native problem,rnand their descendants sometimes employed similar measuresrnboth in Ireland and in the New World.rnWhere the two groups are sufficiently similar in race andrnculture, they can assimilate and merge, as the various groups ofrnGerman and Scandinavian invaders did in Britain. But wherernneither genocide nor fusion is practical, the normal recourse isrnto some kind of caste system. The “Aryans” in India, thernNormans in England, the Dorians in the Greek Peloponnesus,rnand the white Europeans in America all established legal, political,rnand social codes that discouraged intermarriage andrnreduced the less advanced and less powerful ethnic group to arnsubservient position.rnIn some cases, where the differences are not great, as betweenrnSaxon and Norman, or Dorian and Achaean, the twornpopulations will eventually become one, although I have alwaysrnwondered if Walter Scott was really wrong in portrayingrna Norman/Saxon conflict in the time of Richard I. Even inrnthe 18th and 19th centuries one might trace the outlines—rnhowever blurred and muddied by constant crossing and recrossingrnof borders—of at least two Englands—the Anglo-rnNorman upper classes described by Austen and Trollope andrnthe peasants and cockneys depicted by Dickens and Hardy.rnThe English classes have certainly behaved, over the years,rnas if their conflict were really a race war, and similar observationsrnhave been made of the contrast between the Frenchrnupper and lower classes. The distinctions, obviously, cannotrnbe purely ethnic, but what matters is the existence of classrnantagonisms that resemble ethnic conflict. In medieval Tuscany,rnmany centuries after the Lombard conquests, one classrnof gentry continued to call itself the Lombards, although byrnthen the ethnic distinction must have been minimal. Whatrncannot be disputed, however, is the ferocity of the fighting betweenrnthe old nobility and the emerging middle class thatrntriumphed in Florence. Once established in power, thernwealthy merchants loaded down their former rivals with disabilities,rnand the crudest vengeance they could wreak uponrnmembers of their own class was to elevate them to nobility.rnWhether the differences are purely ethnic, purely economic,rnor a mixture of the two, it is hard for two peoples to inhabitrnthe same space at the same time. Nations and peoplesrnare families, if only in myth, and families must look out forrntheir own interests. In the subhuman world, the law thatrngoes by the name of Cause’s principle of competitive exclusionrnJUNE 1993/13rnrnrn