Abstract
Excerpted from: Steven R. Shapiro, Elaine R. Jones, Theodore M. Shaw, George H. Kendall, and L. Song Richardson, Brief of NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., and American Civil Liberties Union as Amicus Curiae in Support of Respondents in United States of America, Petitioner, V. Christopher Lee Armstrong, et Al., Respondents, No. 95-157. October Term, 1995. January 16, 1996, retrieved from Westlaw, November 22, 2019.
Is discovery on claim of selective prosecution not permissible until defendant makes substantial threshold showing of selective prosecution, since that requirement would impose unnecessary and crippling burden upon vindication of equal protection claims? U.S.C.A. Const.Amend. 14.
Did district court properly allow discovery of non-privileged data and charging criteria, on claim of selective prosecution, after defendants presented credible evidence suggesting that only African-Americans were prosecuted in federal court for sales of cocaine base whereas large numbers of non-blacks were prosecuted in state court in which sentences were significantly lighter, and after district court gave careful, deliberate consideration to government's rebuttal evidence?
