A tale of two trials

and an object lesson in racial attitudes

I practiced criminal law for 13 years. So whenever someone opines that the race card is played too much or that police and prosecutors are not racist, I don’t laugh. I tell them about a police detective named Barry who worked for a township in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

Barry arrested and charged two of my clients in two separate incidents within a six month period.

In one, my client was the wheelman for his uncle. The uncle and his cohorts would break into Asian business owners’ homes and steal cash and jewels. They would often beat and tie up their victims unbeknownst to my client. My client was not quite 17 at the time of his arrest.

In the other, my client, upon hearing of his family’s financial difficulties, beat his father and his brother so severely they both ended up in the hospital. My client had gotten upset when his parents would not accept his solution to the problem. After all, they should listen to him, he was almost 20.

Both my clients had I.Q.s under 75 and both lacked any comprehension of the criminality of their actions.

The client in the first scenario, despite cooperation from the moment of his arrest, was denied bail, denied adjudication as a juvenile, and the district attorney fought for a maximal sentence.

The client in the second scenario, during his short stint in county jail, thought he could handle independent living - a major milestone for mentally-challenged adults. The police collected money for the family to help with their bills and the district attorney offered my client a probation before judgement.

It would probably be easier to understand if you knew the first client’s name was Abdullah and the second client’s name was David. The black and white of injustice gets much more defined once that fact is known.

Right now, the Kyle Rittenhouse jury is deliberating in Wisconsin while a trio of three white men in Georgia are preparing to put on their defense in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery.

An acquittal in the Rittenhouse case, which involves two murder and an attempted murder, might lead one to believe that white 17 year-olds can cross state lines with AR-15s with impunity.

An acquittal in the Arbery case might lead to the assumption that any white person can kill a black man if it seems quasi-legal (the trio of idiots involved here allege they were making a citizen’s arrest).

Neither is particularly accurate.

Rittenhouse is claiming self-defense in a case where he went to a great degree of effort to put himself in harm’s way. Furthermore, it is clear from the video and testimony that the baby-faced Rittenhouse (who could have passed for 15) shocked the crowds of people in Kenosha. Mostly because kids are not supposed walking down the street carrying AR-15s, i.e. their reactions were to disarm him not to hurt him.

In the Arbery case, the defendant’s are relying on old vigilante statutes that were “on the books” following Reconstruction as a basis for hunting down, and shooting a jogger ostensibly because they thought he was involved in some burglaries weeks earlier. That argument is so attenuated, it only passed muster with the local police and prosecutor. The vast majority of Georgians saw right through it

In case you were wondering how a nearly 150 year-old laws stay on the books with the advent of full-time modern police forces, ask the National Rifle Association - they have been pushing the myths of the “good guy with a gun” and protecting people from “jack-booted thugs”, aka. the police, for over 50 years.

The lesson in both cases is about bail.

Kyle Rittenhouse, upon the police finding out that he was their chief (actually only) suspect in 2 homicides and an attempted homicide, sent him home. The Kenosha police told him to just go to his home in another state.

In the Arbery case, neither local police nor the county prosecutor even wanted to charge the defendants. It took months and multiple county prosecutors before the state even bothered to indict the defendants. And it took a lengthy court hearing to have the father and son involved in actual killing be denied bail (the third defendant video-taped it).

A white kid is literally sent home to mommy after killing two people and trying to kill a third with a weapon he could not lawfully possess. Three white guys walk around free without a care after murdering a black man.

Putting aside the instant lack of freedom that would have resulted from a black teenager doing what Kyle did or a trio of black men in Georgia trying to arrest a white perpetrator, the problem is still bail.

If our criminal justice system cannot or will not impose bail restrictions on white people with the same speed and Graybar Hotel guest sufficiency as it does with people of color, then the bail system needs to move blind grid system (e.g. “3rd Degree Felony, bail is $25,000”) or a cashless system that does not seek to incarcerate anyone short of murder.

Which leads to the next question and answer.

How do you commit murder and not get thrown in jail? Step 1 is be white and Step 2 is assert some kind of Second Amendment issue into the mix….