Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Jacobson (Massachusetts Superior Court, 2022)

This case seeks to cure a decades-old injustice arising from a criminal trial in the early 1980s that was tainted by antisemitism. In ADL’s letter amicus brief supporting defendant Barry Jacobson’s motion for post-conviction relief, ADL explained how one of the most prominent and persistent stereotypes about Jews is that they “are greedy and avaricious, hoping to make themselves rich by any means possible.” ADL argued that the prosecution’s suggestion at trial that these traits where inherent in Mr. Jacobson was not only improper, but fed directly into the preexisting antisemitic prejudices held by at least one of the jurors, whose comments (“All those rich, New York Jews come up here and think they can do anything and get away with it”) revealed that she believed Mr. Jacobson had these characteristics because he was Jewish, and was guilty for this reason alone. ADL’s letter amicus highlighted the ways in which this was quintessential juror bias — and directly contrary to a “basic premise of our criminal justice system” that the “law punishes people for what they do, not who they are.”