Let's play dress-up!

JP rarely takes an interest in trials (I'm more of an appellate guy, because it sounds like 'spell it') but the Jose Padilla courtroom caught even my decrescendo-ing attention. Padilla's on trial for looking and sounding like a terrorist, while his defense team argues that he's in fact a Muslin liberator around the world... just not in the US.

Luckily, because Mr. Padilla is in the United States, he has a constitutional right to a jury of his peers:

Several times now, the five women and seven men [of the jury] have shown up in color-coordinated outfits. One day, the men dressed in blue and the women in pink. On July 3, the first row wore red, the second white and the third blue, leading bloggers to wonder whether they were worrisomely frivolous or unified — or so patriotic as to condemn all accused terrorists.

If I'm Padilla and the jury shows up in red, white and blue, I move for a mistrial on the grounds that the fact-finders in my case can't dress themselves without consensus...