A Hispanic man by the name of Antonio Garcia-Dorantes was 37 years old when he was convicted of fatally stabbing Jose Delores Gomez and wounding Manual Garcia. Dorantes’ conviction was appealed during a 16-month period ranging from 2001 to 2002. For the crime he was supposed to serve 15-50 years in Cooper Street Correctional Facility in Jackson County. It was noted at the time that his earliest release date would be Oct 21, 2013. In the later half of 2013 Garcia-Dorantes had still not been brought to trial, so U.S. District Judge David Lawson in Detroit ordered the state to either release him from jail or bring him to trial within a time period of 70 days. The order was put on hold until the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati appealed to the Attorney General’s Office. But, not surprisingly, in a 2-1 …show more content…
Lawson, the district court judge, said Garcia wasn’t wrong in claiming that Hispanics and blacks that lived in his area would’ve more likely encountered gang violence, thus giving them a better understanding of the fight that took place on his lawn at 4 a.m. Lawson also argued in favor of Garcia that his state of mind for the jurors which included having similar perceptions, life experiences, and common sense of jurors, that was formed by their cultural and individual backgrounds, would largely change their perspective on what his intentions were when fighting at 4 a.m. with a knife on his front lawn. But state prosecutors argued that because the judge erred in finding proper representation of Hispanics and Blacks in the jury pool that it was not unfair and reasonable. The prosecutors also argued that there is “nothing inherent in race or ethnicity that would give a juror special insight into gang