"Yes, I still think the chances of them being convicted are about zero."
Prediction by a lawyer who practiced in Arkansas.
Kevin Drum's blog is a typical example of opinions that I see and hear in the establishment media:
"Unlike Kyle Rittenhouse, the Ahmaud Arbery case is open and shut."
No it's not. The defense knows its jury.
The establishment media commentators on the Arbery case reiterate facts and law that would lead a trusting reader or viewer to think that "justice" will prevail, in the form of guilty verdicts. They reiterate the facts as they interpret them: Three White guys profiled a helpless Black man who was alone, unarmed, jogging on the streets of a White neighborhood. The White guys, armed with shotguns, used pickup trucks to run him down, finally cornering him -- "like a rat" as they put it -- by surrounding him with their trucks, shouting at him to stop or they would "blow your fucking head off." Then, when facing a shotgun pointed at him, in desperation, Arbery grabbed at the shotgun barrel and was shot and killed. The shooter addressed a passerby, describing the man he shot: "He's an asshole."
It was a modern day lynching by people who did it proudly. They videotaped it. The local police establishment did a quick investigation of the people they knew well from prior employment, found no crime, and hid the video evidence, which came to light only after it was leaked to the media.
The case checks every box of White liberals' frustration at the justice system's racial disparities, but the facts of this case give liberals hope, buttressed by the media coverage. How could the jury possibly find them not-guilty? And so, with a guilty verdict, America will be spared the inevitable outrage and public unrest that would come if the three men got off.
Or not.
The defense attorneys approach is a poker player's "tell." This case will not hang on the facts or the law. If the defense ever referenced race directly, I have not heard it. Instead, it is done in code. They describe an "idyllic" community, with friendly neighbors. Crime was unknown, until recently. The defense attorneys positioned these men as part of that paradise, good citizens, good neighbors. These alert protectors saw a suspicious man so, of course, they carried guns for self-defense when they chased him so they could politely request he stop to answer their legitimate questions.
The defense attorneys' are giving the jury members permission to vote their guts and protect their team. Arbery is "other," a low-caste other. He is no "jogger"--a descriptor of middle-class self-care. He was a criminal interloper. Laura Hogue, one of the defense attorneys, said, "He was no victim." He wore "khaki shorts, with no socks, to cover his long dirty toenails."
That confirms the "tell." She was not avoiding the lynching trope. She was leaning into it. The local citizenry was doing on their own what the slow, technicality-burdened legal system confounds, and the more reason for the three men to have done what they did. The defense implication is that you good citizens on the jury know what is really going on. A young buck was up to no good and they took care of business the way you sometimes need to do, like killing a dangerous animal shot out season. Or a criminal on the run. Or a runaway slave. They had seen Arbery in the autopsy photographs. He had long, dirty toenails. He wasn't one of us. He was one of them.
19 comments:
African Americans have been killed for driving while Black, jogging while Black, wearing a hoodie while Black, selling cigarettes while Black, and the list goes on.
The so-called “land of the free” has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Although Whites are over five times as numerous as Blacks in the U.S., Black Americans are incarcerated at nearly five times the rate of Whites: https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons/
But God forbid that anybody should suggest we might have a problem with systemic racism in this country. We’d have the snowflakes pitching a hissy fit, blabbering about “woke” and “CRT.” Lord spare us.
Respectfully disagree--diametrically. The Arbery case is NOT another iteration of the Rittenhouse case. It would be if Arbery had been armed and shot the three men who were pursuing him. I think these defendants are going down hard. The Rittenhouse three DID get what they deserved under facts and law. Arbery did not. Sometimes a cigar...and usually the facts. Juries look for who made the bed. The fraught race analyses are tails wagging dogs.
You may be right, I hope not.
Progressive optimism endures, otherwise all is meaningless. Damn those founders!
How dare they propose that all men are created equal and then create a nation where the exact opposite was the rule for those who were kidnapped and brought here as slaves. A nation that a century later had to fight a tragic civil war to take one small step towards the vision, a fight that continues to this day, not on battlefields but on city streets and in courtrooms.
If Mr. Arbery had been caucasian? That's the only question that really matters.
Rittenhouse obtained an AR-15 illegally and took it across state lines to a protest, where he used it to kill two people and wound a third. No Black person would get away with that.
On the other hand, three White guys who killed a Black for running in their neighborhood do have a reasonable expectation of being acquitted.
"Justice for all" remains an illusory ideal.
I will support what the jury decides, regardless of which way it goes. I will refrain from injecting anything about “race“ to cast aspersions on the jury decision.
I wish everyone would do the same, but I am sure that the usual suspects will use the case to bang their usual drums. Race-baiting ambulance chasers Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have already shown up in court, carelessly providing the defense with a potential avenue of appeal.
Mike,
The correct statistic to use would be incarceration rate factored in with crime rate. Crime rates vary widely among different demographic groups. Just using incarceration rate per capita obscures that significant and relevant aspect of the data.
Mike--
No need to tacitly concede yet again on CRT. The beating of your telltale heart? Hint: what you don't understand or don't want to acknowledge is not the definition of "blabbering" thereby.
Spot on though with your disparate-impact statistical proof of systemic racism in criminal justice. The stats should mirror demographics, or else Racism! Those arch-racist police, DAs, judges, along with cooperative victims and news media, simply sweep all those white and Asian gun homicides and armed robberies under the rug, which would reveal the true violent crime distribution.
Rick--
Q.E.D.
Unknown @9:10--
Facts, not smearspin: State lines is legally irrelevant to the Rittenhouse charges, even if the gun was illegal, which it wasn't. Even morally, Kenosha is the nearest big town to his home. His father and grandparents live there, and he has worked there.
Even if (if) "no black person would get away with" what Rittenhouse did, that has no direct bearing on the proper application of facts to law inside the State v. Rittenhouse courtroom. We can be pretty certain, however, that the legacy media and the leftist audience would under the same facts declare HIM to be a hero deserving of acquittal, in another fine display of intellectual and ethical integrity.
Yes, Michael, I’m sure Blacks are incarcerated at ten times the rate of Whites because they’re ten times more lawless. It all began with their nasty habit of running away from their masters, which is how slave patrols became the forerunners of police departments in the South. Oops, there goes that critical race theory again, but don’t worry – it won’t “woke” you.
I have to wonder if you would feel the same if a jury composed of 11 black m.j enough, and one white, exonerated a trio of b lk ack defendants for killing an unarmed white jogger.
Mike,
Here in Portland, blacks are about 6% of the population, and are apparently committing about 50% of the current wave of homicides. That makes the homicide rate for blacks about 15 times the homicide rate for whites per capita.
Data, not opinion…
Low Dungeon---
"No need to tacitly concede yet again on CRT."
That shouldn't be a problem, since I never did. Everybody knows CRT is a catchall term you use for black history, which you apparently don't want taught in our schools. Whine all you want, but the odds are it will be. As MLK, Jr. once said, "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." I'm hoping that will be the case for the U.S.
I thought you kill when faced with overwhelming fear of your life. Against little Kyle was one guy who had a skate board, the other threw a plastic bag and the last guy had a flying foot and a Glock Handgun. Paper Scissors Rock AK47? An immature ill trained kid with an army weapon kills and walks.A great recruit for the US Army and a new My Lai incident. No Army Vet with military training in weapons would have condoned this behavior.
Go for a jog in South Central Los Angeles and then talk about the Arbery case - white boys, Jew boys, Mexican boys, Italian boys, Chinese boys, Vietnamese boys, East Indian boys, Japanese boys, MS 13 boys. Probably nothing would happen. Oh yeah.
Whether or not black people, who make up 6% of PDX’s population commit 50% of homicides there, it is irrelevant to whether it is OK to shoot black people because they are walking in a white neighborhood. If Males commit 95% of all rapes, that doesn’t make it OK for vigilantes run down and castrate any found walking past the girls dorm.
Of course it’s about race. Duh…,
Mike—
Another of your three or four prefab reply pull-strings! This time you simply appended the appeal-to-authority fallacy, “Everybody knows”.
You conceded the first time when you had no substantive reply to my extended summary of the origins and present-day applications of CRT.
The second time was above by gratuitously referencing the exchange, indicating you realize you came up short. In fact, you had nada.
Ralph—
The law of self-defense in Wisconsin as in Oregon is neither Texas-style stand your ground, nor Massachusetts-style duty to retreat.
Deadly force is justified if and when a non-provocateur had reasonable apprehension of suffering serious physical injury or death.
A skateboard, in the manner in which it was used, is a dangerous weapon in Wisconsin, especially coupled with overt threats.
Michael, you ever hear the saying about how 42.7% of statistics are made up on the spot or did you have some actual evidence for your claims about the "wave of homicides" that you'd care to share with the group?
Dungeon---
You superciliously profess that CRT is being taught in our schools, as if you knew what you were talking about, and I'm supposed to take you seriously? Please!
It's impossible to accurately say what another person would have (or have not) gotten away with. That's just foolish.
Science has proven that everyone is different. Heck,even our fingerprints are not the same.
Well, the jury came back, and three good old boys from Georgia are going to prison. With respect, Peter, this is one time I was glad to see your predictions wrong.
Anonymous,
The data is easy to find all over the place on the Internet. Go look for yourself.
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