No Sir, A Car Full of Blacks And Hispanics Does Not Mean A Drug Deal Is About To Occur

Justice Sonia Sotomayor slammed a Texas prosecutor for a "racially charged" question.

The case comes from a drug arrest in Texas, when the defendant Bongani Charles Calhoun claimed he did not know the group of men that gave him a ride were going to commit a drug deal. 

The prosecutor asked the defendant, "You've got African Americans, you've got Hispanics, you've got a bag full of money. Does that tell you -- a light bulb doesn't go off in your head and say, 'This is a drug deal?"'

Justice Sotomayor along with Justice Stephen Breyer criticized the prosecutor and labeled his line of questioning as "pernicious in its attempt to substitute racial stereotypes for evidence, and racial prejudice for reason. It is deeply disappointing to see a representative of the United States resort to this base tactic more than a decade into the 21st century."

Although the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal, Justice Sotomayor did not want the prosecutor's statement to go untouched.

Justice Sotomayor continued to state, "by suggesting that race should play a role in establishing a defendant's criminal intent, the prosecutor here tapped a deep and sorry vein of racial prejudice that has run through the history of criminal justice in our nation." 

Sotomayor concluded, "I hope never to see a case like this again." And this, among many other reasons, is why we love Justice Sotomayor.          

Read more here.