Back in the day, the fear (probably with actual instances) was that jury nullification would be used by jurors to refuse to convict a white (perhaps KKK) defendant on trial for lynching a black man.
Nowadays, the fear is that jurors will refuse to convict a cop on trial for shooting a black man. History repeats itself.
It does illustrate how racial violence has been institutionalized: we have replaced lynch mobs with the police, both for the same purpose: instilling fear into African-Americans.
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