Justice and injustice came this month with the trials of the three murderers of Ahmaud Arbury and the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse for the killing of two and the wounding of a third during the rioting following the shooting of Jacob Blake, an African American who was killed seven times by one white policeman shot dead.
The judge in the Rittenhouse case acted shamelessly and made it clear that he sympathized with the defendant. His antics were outrageous and he should be removed from the bank. Judges should be impartial. It wasn’t him. He pretended to think the trial was a joke. He wouldn’t even allow the victims to be called victims.
But the prosecution also exaggerated. It wasn’t a first degree murder. Under the circumstances that night, as the video recorded by a viewer shows, Rittenhouse may have felt threatened and feared for his life. But there is no doubt that he ignited the protesters by showing up with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. The whole thing probably wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t introduced the weapon. Little kid, big gun.
Rittenhouse should have been held accountable for carrying a gun he was not legally entitled to. He drove 20 miles across state lines to bring an assault rifle into an angry mob of protesters. That alone fueled the situation. He should have been held accountable for his actions, and he wasn’t. It is an injustice.
The judge’s antics have undoubtedly registered with the jury, and that is important because we are facing a crisis in this country with the proliferation of gun violence. Rittenhouse was a minor – how did he and his friend get an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle? Who made it available to you? The victims’ families should sue anyone who gave Rittenhouse access to a weapon.
It’s easy to feel sorry for a child, but his own mother says, “I know him and he would probably do it again.” His age was undoubtedly a jury consideration, but this boy killed two people. It was his conscious choice to carry a gun – an AR-15, no less, which means that he intended to shoot someone. Victims were on record and not particularly compassionate, but gun violence is all too common and can only be made worse if not punished.
Would the jury have condemned Rittenhouse if he were African American? Finding nothing guilty was an attack on the rule of law. In the present case there is no circumstance under which Rittenhouse was not guilty of aiding and abetting violence. His acquittal was an act of injustice.
The multiple convictions of the murderers of Ahmaud Arbury, on the other hand, were a blow for right-wing extremists, white racists and vigilante groups of all stripes, but also a victory for justice and the rule of law. The attempts by the defendants’ attorneys to slander Arbury after the judgment, alleging he was guilty of various offenses, were pitifully weak and morally outrageous. Arbury showed human curiosity about the progress of work on a house that was being built. He didn’t take anything. He didn’t destroy or damage anything. If the owners had told him not to enter the premises, he certainly would not have.
But the triad of murderers did not own the property and had no reputation. The highest thing they could legally do was contact the owners and let them know that they thought Arbury was trespassing. You had no right to disturb him in any way. Their claim that they were trying to arrest a citizen is flimsy at best and not a defense for murder. Arbury’s only crime was jogging during Black.
But there is enough guilt to get around. Arbury’s mother persistently complained that Arbury was murdered, but law enforcement officials refused to investigate until the video of his shooting was released and found its way onto the internet, where the outrage went viral and forced law enforcement to act.
It took them 74 days to open the case, and it probably wouldn’t have happened at all had it not been for the taped video of the third perpetrator, William “Roddie” Bryan. Gregory McMichael released the video because he thought his son was being treated unfairly by the press. McMichael seemed to think it was some kind of heroic feat. This is Georgia, after all.
While praising the Georgia jury who did justice to the Arburys family, we should also condemn the actions of defendants’ attorney Kevin Gough, who tried to restrict who could come to support the Arburys and complained that the “black Pastors and high-ranking black “citizens” who wanted to comfort the Arbury family might intimidate the jury.
“We don’t want any more black pastors here,” he said. The defense also tried to prevent African Americans from being on the jury. Of 12 African Americans in a jury pool of 60 candidates, only one stayed on the jury. The judge expressed his view that this constituted “institutional discrimination” but referred to limitations in the Supreme Court precedent that allowed jury seating when the reasons cited had nothing to do with race.
This Georgian jury overlooked the blatant attempt to appeal to racism in order to reach a fair judgment. We praise the jury.
Martha Johnson is a resident of Elizabeth City.