Another Victim of Our Injustice System

15 years ago, I served as a juror in the trial of a colored gentleman accused of kidnapping his ex-girlfriend. She testified that he broke into her house, put a gun to her head and drove her for an hour to a city that’s roughly 4 hours away, let her go and instructed her to call the police. He’d already been in jail for around a year awaiting trial.

He had a credible alibi, which was that he was watching TV with his new baby momma and her son. There was no evidence of his guilt whatsoever besides the implausible story his vengeful ex had concocted. The prosecutors obviously knew they had no case. In the courtroom, I was youthfully-perplexed as to why they would try him in the first place.

During the deliberations, I realized it was because they thought they could score an easy win. First of all, it was a trial that couldn’t take more than a day. Second, it required the most minimal of prep work since her testimony constituted the only evidence.

Third, my hometown is over half black. That meant that the jury pool had a high percentage of black women. Black women find a domestic violence situation at the hands of a black man to be a very relatable experience. “I believe he put dat gun to her head” exclaimed one of them. The rest did that “mm hmm” thing.

I convinced them to find him not guilty by explaining that if we agreed to do that right away, all we’d need to do is tell the judge and then we could all go home. However, a guilty verdict would make an additional imposition on our time. I was on my couch watching Walker, Texas Ranger by 4pm.

That was my first personal experience with seeing just how unethically somebody who’s supposed to uphold the law can behave. My moral compass wouldn’t allow me to dishonestly argue why an innocent man should be put in a cage for my own benefit. I don’t think that makes me a saint. I’m pretty sure it just makes me an average person because society couldn’t have functioned for as long as it has if most people had this sociopathic mentality.

I’m not so sure that functionality can persist much longer because of the legal precedents these evil people are setting. The era where somebody like George Zimmerman can receive a fair trial, even if he shouldn’t have been charged in the first place, ended when Trump got elected.

Jake Gardner, one of his supporters, reached a similar conclusion with heartbreaking results. He recently committed suicide after being charged with enough felonies to get him nearly a century of prison time for shooting to death a black felon who attacked him for defending his business from being looted. Gardner attempted to resolve the situation verbally, retreated and fired warning shots, but had no other choice when he was tackled and choked.

This was absolutely a case of self-defense, but Gardner was a white man with the wrong political views. He surmised that his guilt would be as politically pre-determined as the charges against him and that bail wasn’t a possibility. It’s a playbook that closely mirrors the plight of the McMichaels in Georgia who shot burglar Ahmed Arbery after he attacked them and attempted to take a gun.

In their case as well, the DA ruled self-defense. However, a politically-reliable special prosecutor was brought in to find “new evidence” and use that as a justification to bring outrageous charges against them. Just like Kyle Rittenhouse, none of the people in these situations get bail.

Gardner’s course of action was a tragedy, but his lack of optimism was rooted firmly in reality.

Tom Shackleford

I’m proud to officially announce my candidacy for the office of Dogcatcher.