Melissa Harris-Perry: Hi, everyone. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry and this is The Takeaway. Oklahoma, Georgia, Wisconsin, these places represent three cases that highlight the American criminal justice system and the problem of racial injustice. We've been following the case of Julius Jones, who was sentenced to death by the State of Oklahoma after being convicted of murder in 1999. Back in September, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommended commutation of Jones's sentence. The Governor did not act on this recommendation, asking instead for a clemency decision.
On November 1, the board recommended clemency and it's now up to Governor Kevin Stitt's Office whether to approve the recommendation before Jones is scheduled to be executed on November 18, just eight days from now. On Monday, students from the University of Oklahoma where Jones was a student at the time of his arrest, protested in support of Jones, and in order to pressure Governor Stitt to approve the clemency.
Female Speaker 1: I'm not free?
Crowd: Till Julius is free.
Female Speaker 1: Justice for?
Crowd: Julius.
Melissa Harris-Perry: In Brunswick, Georgia, a trial is in progress for three white men Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael, and William Bryan, who are charged with the murder of Ahmad Arbery, a Black man who was jogging through a neighborhood in Brunswick, Georgia last February. A jury of 11 white jurors and only one Black juror was selected and sworn in on Friday. In Kenosha, Wisconsin another trial is underway for Kyle Rittenhouse, who's charged with shooting and killing two people and shooting and wounding another at a Black Lives Matter protests last summer. Rittenhouse is white, as are the three men he shot. The protests in Kenosha began after a white police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black man seven times in the back during a domestic disturbance complaint. To walk us through these ongoing trials, we're joined by Nicole Lewis, Senior Editor of Jurisprudence @Slate. Nicole, it's great to have you back.
Nicole Lewis: Thanks for having me on.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's start in Georgia with the trial of the three men accused of the murder of Arbery. Last time we talked the jury selection was just beginning. Now a nearly all-white jury has been selected. What does this tell you about what may happen in this case?
Nicole Lewis: There was a big question at the start of the case as jury selection was getting underway if this would be a fair trial and one of the indicators for many people in that town is what the jury selection looks like, who's actually on the jury. It's interesting to point out that the judge pointed that there might be an appearance of some intentional discrimination now that there's only one Black man on the jury, but he refused to hear the prosecutors challenge to receive eight Black jurors. He just allowed this jury to stand. It's important to note that people cannot be struck or should not be struck from juries just on the race alone but prosecutors and defense attorneys have become so savvy and sophisticated and asking proxy questions that would allow them to show that they have some other grounds for striking a juror but that those grounds are clearly highly tied and highly connected to race.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Just for folks who may not be sitting at home and following every minute of the jury selection, was this so racially skewed jury because the jury pool itself was so racially skewed? In other words, were there very few African-Americans who were in the pool, or was it about prosecutors being able to make a decision to strike who they wanted in the jury?
Nicole Lewis: Well, a little bit of both. The county itself is predominantly white. I think it's about 75% white and 25% Black but there were Black jurors. Hundreds of people are selected so that you can have a nice cross-cut of the community but there were tons of questions asked during the jury selection process that are just coded terms that would allow the defense or allow the prosecution to strike people as they see fit. One of the questions being asked was about the Confederate flag and what it represents. You can imagine for Black people living in a southern town, the Confederate flag has a particular meaning but in the courtroom, it may look like if you say yes, the Confederate flag is a symbol of the racist south, that you're somehow not neutral or not objective and therefore not eligible to decide this case and so you get struck for cause.
Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, one more question on the trial in Georgia. We talked a bit about video footage of the shooting before, was the video footage discussed at all in this jury selection process?
Nicole Lewis: One of the ways that it came up and this is a real tricky part for a case like this that had such incredible local and national media attention was were they going to be able to find anybody in this jury who had not seen the video, who had not heard of the case prior to being selected? Could they find someone who was completely neutral and uninformed about what happened and that was not the case. Pretty much everyone who came on that jury stand through jury selection had seen something, had heard something about it. The question for the defense and for the prosecution is had that already meant that they had made up their minds here or could they be impartial and neutral observers to make a decision?
Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, I'm going to move to the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. I want to start with a little bit of sound from the judge in that trial who made headlines in the last couple of weeks over his issue of prosecutors referring to the men who were shot as victims. Let's listen.
Judge: This is a long-held opinion of mine, which very few judges I guess share with me. I think the word victim is a loaded, loaded word.
Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, what is going on there?
Nicole Lewis: He does have a long-standing policy in which he does not allow anyone to refer to the deceased or to the aggrieved as victims and that has been a policy in his courtroom for many years. The idea here is that the defense's case or Rittenhouse is that he's acting in self-defense and so by calling the people who he murdered and the one person who he shot, they're victims, that already suggests that he's guilty, but I think again, here we have to point out that this same judge who's saying that victim is a loaded word made it okay for the defense to call Rittenhouse's victims looters and rioters if they felt that the label fit. You can ask yourself if a victim is a loaded word then is it looter and rioter also a loaded word that it suggests somehow that these people were criminals who deserve to be shot and deserve to be wounded who were in the process of committing crimes. It just again, really calls into that question about fairness and balance here.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, Rittenhouse is white. The three people he shot are also white but there isn't any question that he shot them but the way that this becomes a racial justice issue is because they were shot at the Black Lives Matter protest. Help us understand this.
Nicole Lewis: Yes, I think it's a number of things actually. They were shot at a Black Lives Matter protest. They were shot at a protest that erupted after police shot and killed a Black man in Wisconsin. Just the very fact that Rittenhouse took an AR-15, got in his car, drove to Kenosha under the auspices of defending this car dealership, all of that has racial implications. It makes us think about militias, makes us think about just how people have responded to any kind of unrest in cities and then those sort of legacy there.
What draws a 17-year-old to say, "We need to go work on the side of the Police and I need this assault rifle in order to defend property"? I think that all of those things have huge racial implications and so just because his victims are white, they were there in support of anti-racism, of saying, "No more police killings," and somehow, Rittenhouse is saying, "We got to protect these cars." This becomes crucially important and I'm working on the side of the police and I somehow am viewed with some sort of right that allows me to do this as a private citizen.
Melissa Harris-Perry: A private citizen, but also a teenager. I'm wondering the extent to which the conversation about his age is going to merge. We know an awful lot about brain development and about particularly with under 25-year-old boys. Look, this is not about an excuse, but it is that in many cases, for example, on the show, we have some concerns about teenagers being tried in an adult court.
Nicole Lewis: Yes, absolutely. Rittenhouse is 18 now, but he was 17 when he committed these crimes and over the course of the past decade, the criminal justice system has been reconsidering the way they think about crimes committed by young people and these are people up to age 25. Now understanding that our brains don't fully develop and our executive functioning still is being sorted out and there will be big questions about how impulsive was he. Was he able to make reasonable rational decisions here? Was he caught up in the heat of the moment? One thing that the prosecution has made clear in their case was, there were many other people out there that night, many of them also teenagers and young people and Rittenhouse was the only person who shot and killed two people and wounded one other and so they're trying to suss out, is there something that sets him apart here? How can it be that he's the only one who committed violence that night?
Melissa Harris-Perry: Got it. Nicole Lewis is the Senior Editor of Jurisprudence @Slate. Nicole, thanks for joining us and keeping us up to date.
Nicole Lewis: Thanks for having me on.
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