One assumption behind the courtroom theater is that both versions of the truth, the one presented by the prosecution and the one suggested by the defense, are equal, in that either one could be selected by the jury as the winning version of what happened. What is left unanswered in this system of procedural justice is whether both sides are equally worthy if one version of these truths depends on its connection to racial prejudices that a jury of ordinary people may have.
The racist seed of the uncontrollable black man, planted early, has been nourished ever since. Defense counsel Eric Nelson insisted that video preceding Floyd’s death shows “the police squad car rocking back and forth” to highlight just how strong and wild Floyd was. So significant was the danger posed by the large and out-of-control Floyd, the defense wants the jury (and everyone else watching) to believe, that it justified the use of “maximum restraint technique,” what used to be called the “hobble or the hog tie.” It is in the justified and appropriate process of hog tying George Floyd that the defendant Derek Chauvin used “[one] knee to pin Mr. Floyd’s left shoulder blade and back to the ground and his right knee to pin Mr. Floyd’s left arm to the ground.”
As these details are tossed about in the courtroom, the damage to the larger discourse about race is already done. The Black man has been framed as an animal, a “hog” that must be tied up so that it won’t thrash and flail at having been apprehended. In the choreographed environment of the courtroom, where the focus is upon discerning a truth in the specific case at hand, there is no room to draw connections to America’s larger racist history. (...)
Having stated that a Black man can be hog tied and held to the ground, the defense also set out to prove that the Black crowd at Cup Foods was belligerent, hostile, and menacing. In his opening statement, Nelson told the jury that “as the crowd grew in size, similarly so too did their anger.” In the defense narrative, there is no effort to individuate the members of the crowd, to note that the “crowd” included a seventeen-year-old and her nine-year-old cousin out to get a snack at Cup Foods, an off-duty EMT who begged police to let her help Floyd, an MMA fighter who had trained alongside Minneapolis police officers, and an old man who could not help but cry when he took the stand. The defense deployment of the “angry black man” became literal in the cross-examination of Donald Wynn Williams II, the mixed martial artist. “It’s fair to say you got angrier and angrier?” Nelson needled Williams, until he replied, “I grew professional and professional. I stayed in my body. You can’t paint me out to be angry.” (...)
There is no doubt that the murder of George Floyd has provoked a racial reckoning in the United States. In the anti-racist work and conversations that have taken place since, efforts have been made to expose surreptitious and systemic racism. But if the Derek Chauvin trial is any illustration, this work has not yet reached the courtroom. Regardless of the outcome of the trial itself and whether there is any justice for George Floyd, the direct appeal to racist prejudice, featuring the uncontrollable and angry Black man, the rough and lawless world of the inner city, the mostly Black crowd as menacing, have all been normalized by the defense as plausible explanations of what happened. Having these ideas form such an integral and overt centerpiece of the trial in a courtroom, where they are not critically examined, suggests to those watching that such a narrative is permissible and possibly true.
by Rafia Zakaria, The Baffler | Read more:
Image: Defense attorney Eric Nelson delivers his opening statement at the Derek Chauvin trial. | AJC
