I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Tuesday, November 9th.

We'll begin today with issues raised in the trials of Kyle Rittenhouse in Wisconsin and the three men accused of murdering

Ahmad Arbery in Georgia. The cases are very different in some ways, but also have some major

overlapping issues, including that they are both cases of alleged white vigilantes who killed people

in racially charged circumstances as they assume the role of police officers,

which they are not. In both cases, the defendants are pleading self-defense. And in both cases,

there have been issues of racism on the jury. One juror in the Rittenhouse case has already been

dismissed for telling a racist joke about the case to a court deputy,

who he apparently thought would find the racist joke funny and acceptable and not report him to

the judge. And maybe the most publicized of all the issues so far is the infuriating finding

by the judge in the Georgia case that there was intentional racism,

intentional discrimination in the jury selection process, that racism did determine the composition

of the jury, but there is nothing he can do about it. Here are a few clips of the judge,

Timothy Walmsley, from the bench. First,

the basic finding. This court has found that there appears to be intentional discrimination

in the panel. That's that prima facie case. A prima facie case. Primafaci means clearly true, self-evident. Here the judge explains a

little bit of why, but says he cannot reseat the jury. Quite a few African-American jurors were

excused through preemptory strikes exercised by the defense. But that doesn't mean that the court has the authority to

reseat. He doesn't have the authority to receipt to order a new, not obviously racist jury

selection process. And here he explains a little bit of why he believes he does not have that authority

under Georgia state law. Again, in the state of Georgia, all the defense needs to do is provide

that legitimate, non-discriminatory, clear, reasonably specific, and related reason. And the court

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