Im-Politic: A Bad Week in Court…for the Race-Mongers

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African Americans, Ahmaud Arbery, Andrew Coffee, anti-semitism, Charlottesville, citizens arrest, criminal justice, Florida, fugitive slave laws, Georgia, Im-Politic, Kenosha, Kyle Rittenhouse, racism, self-defense, systemic racism, Unite the Right, vigilantism, white supremacists

It’s been a very bad week for those Americans (and others) convinced that their country’s entire society, and especially its criminal justice system, remain so thoroughly infected with racism that nothing less than multiple amputations and lobotomies are required.

As a result, it’s been a very good week for those Americans (and others) trying to grapple rigorously with the racism that has historically stained that criminal justice system and larger society, culture, and economy, and with its lingering effects in all their complexity.

For this time period has seen no fewer than three race-infused trials conclude with verdicts that thoroughly debunk claims of bigotry racism in that justice system so pervasive as to be systemic.

The first and most publicized resulted in murder convictions for three white Georgians who killed an African American man jogging through a neighborhood in the southeastern corner of the state. The trio of whites blamed their attack on Ahmaud Arbery on his resistance to their attempts to carry out a citizen’s arrest prompted by suspicions of his involvement in several local burglaries.

But the nearly all-white jury ultimately agreed with the prosecutor’s observation that the attackers’ actions were utterly illegal vigilantism even by the recklessly indulgent standards of a state law that, like many counterparts, is rooted in a history of genuinely shameful fugitive slave statutes – and that was repealed this past May. For none of the defendants saw Arbery engage even in any dodgy act, and possessed no evidence of his possible guilt.

Arbery’s family and others argued that the killing took much too long to be investigated, and their charges of attempted cover-up by some local officials seems to have been vindicated by the eventual decisions of area prosecutors and judges to recuse themselves from the trial. So there’s a strong case to be made that justice was delayed. But in this instance, it’s clear that it wasn’t denied.

The second trial attracted less attention, but appears no less important. This past Tuesday, more than a dozen white racist and anti-semitic leaders and their organizations, which organized the tumultuous 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that claimed one life, were found guilty of breaking state law by conspiring to intimidate, harass, or harm counter-protestors and local residents. The verdict by the majority white jury awarded the plaintiffs $26 million in compensatory and punitive damages, and the defendants are almost certain to be tried on the federal charges (of conspiring to commit racially motivated violence) on which the jury failed to reach a decision.

The third trial has received almost no national attention, but is especially interesting given widespread arguments that acquitted Kenosha, Wisconsin shooter Kyle Rittenhouse would have been found guilty of some form of homicide had he been black. (See, e.g., here and here.) This third trial is especially interesting because the verdict actually did acquit on self-defense charges an African American who killed an intruder into his home and attempted to slay another. Special bonus: The two intruders were cops.

The defendant, Andrew Coffee IV, didn’t get off scot free. The Vero Beach, Florida jurors found him guilty of illegally possessing a firearm. (He was found guilty of felony battery and evading arrest in 2013.) But his position that he didn’t realize that the intruders were law enforcement officers, and didn’t hear the SWAT team in question so identify itself, carried the day on the main charge. And here’s a fun fact – Coffee’s acquittal came the same day as Rittenhouse’s.

As noted above, these results don’t mean that African Americans have never gotten horrifically raw deals from the American criminal justice system, or even that no such injustices take place today. (I’ve written about the latter issue, e.g., here.) But these three verdicts – which all came in states belonging to the old Confederacy – cannot possibly have taken place in a country still determined to suppress the rights of blacks (and other minorities). Instead, they took place in a country where, as noted by an African American lawyer quoted here, such outcomes are possible, if not yet often enough, in the first place – and always have been.

Im-Politic: Why College Taught Me Everything Important About the Rittenhouse Trial

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Im-Politic, Kenosha, Kyle Rittenhouse, Rittenhouse trial, Rittenhouse verdict, self-defense

So what kind of a blogger on current affairs-type stuff would I be if I didn’t weigh in on the Kyle Rittenhouse trial? I did hesitate briefly out of concern that I might have to violate one of the main rules I try to follow when deciding what to post: making sure that I add something meaningful to what’s already been said. But then I realized that, of all things, a story from my college days might shed some light on how ludicrous the charges – not all the important but legally extraneous matters that have been brought, but the actual charges given the jury – have been from the start.

I’m presenting the story in condensed form, but it starts in the lobby of Princeton University’s Firestone Library, sometime near week-night closing time for the regular facility (around midnight, as I recall), where and when groups of friends typically gathered to figure out if they’ll do anything after studying – or just to gather briefly. So I’m there with one of my groups and an additional friend (we’ll call him “X”) walks over to join us and proceeds to point to a female student standing across the lobby – no doubt waiting for some of her own friends to show up.

“You see that girl?” he asks while pointing. “She’s been following me.”

Whereupon one of us responded, “X, how could she be following you? She got here before you.”

Replied X, without missing a beat, “She’s been following me in reverse.”

Although the rest of our group kept insisting that, at least based on her behavior that night, the female student in question could have been following X only if she arrived in that lobby after him – and that, if anything, the follower would logically have been him – X stuck to his guns.

The tale is relevant to the Rittenhouse trial because the charges deliberated upon by the jury centered on whether Rittenhouse used deadly force unlawfully that night in Kenosha, Wisconsin, or whether the gun shots he fired were legal because they were acts of self-defense. In that state, and apparently in the nation generally, the prosecution needs to present evidence establishing certain kinds of facts about the circumstances of the relevant sequence of events and about defendants’ frames of mind in order to prove criminal or civil liability. And especially whenever life and death or other serious stakes are involved, we should want justice to proceed methodically.

But not all facts are created equal, and to me, the one piece of evidence that cleared Rittenhouse all along – and that in fact justifies doubt about whether charges should have been brought at all – is that he was running away from his eventual victims (along with the complete lack of evidence that any prior violent acts by him caused their pursuit).

After all, someone fleeing others is clearly afraid of them. It’s true that Rittenhouse testified that he knew his first victim and original pursuer, Joseph Rosenbaum, was unarmed. He also, however, said under oath that Rosenbaum “was chasing me, I was alone, he threatened to kill me earlier that night.”

And here’s where I believe my college story adds a new insight to the Rittenhouse verdict debate: Claiming that firing at a pursuer with arguably murderous intent doesn’t qualify as self-defense is akin to X’s claim that the woman who arrived in the library lobby after him was a “reverse follower.” Meaning that convicting Rittenhouse would have amounted to deciding that he was a “reverse aggressor.” And it would have been just as obviously – though not at all humorously – absurd.