Message......

Jurors send a powerful message

Opinion by Richard Galant

"I do not pretend to understand the moral universe," wrote anti-slavery Unitarian minister Theodore Parker in a sermon published in 1853. "The arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice."

Those words, famously echoed by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and former President Barack Obama, come to mind when juries render their verdicts, as they did twice last week in closely watched cases.

In Georgia, a jury found three men guilty of murdering Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was chased and shot to death on a suburban street in 2020. In Virginia, a jury ordered extremists, including organizers of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, to pay damages of more than $26 million for the violence that ensued.

The Georgia verdicts "represent a real strike against white supremacy and systemic racism in our criminal legal system," wrote Issac Bailey. The "nearly all-White jury shamed the defense for believing anti-Black racism would help secure an acquittal. It's the kind of decision we should want replicated throughout our system, the kind we should want proclaimed and celebrated, the kind we must hope becomes precedent. If it does, Black jurors would not be continuously discriminated against during jury selection. If it does, racist White men would think twice before arming themselves to take matters into their own hands the way White racist mobs did during the height of the lynching era. If it does, I'll feel less of a need to arm myself to go jogging alone, even in nearly-all White neighborhoods."

Legal analyst Areva Martin credited the "the powerful video evidence and the stellar work of prosecutor Linda Dunikoski" for leaving "in shreds the preposterous citizen's arrest/self-defense contentions that were raised" by the defendants. "Travis McMichael's contradictory statements and testimony, along with the video evidence, demonstrated that he never had a fear of imminent harm and never even told Arbery he was holding him for the police."

"Reasonable fear did not motivate this killing. The prosecution had only to mention the defendant's own words on the 911 call he made. What emergency did he cite? 'There's a Black male running down the street.'"

In Virginia, jurors also rejected the defense's case. The Charlottesville rally, Frida Ghitis wrote, is "seared in the minds of many Americans...The march through the grounds of the University of Virginia looked and sounded like something out of 1930s Nazi Germany, with tiki torches and shouts of 'Jews will not replace us,' 'Blood and soil,' and stiff-armed Nazi-style salutes."

"The moment seemed to confirm our worst fears. The day after that spine-chilling march, violent clashes between racists and anti-racists turned deadly when one of the defendants rammed his car into a crowd of counter protesters, killing one and injuring several of the people now turned plaintiffs in this lawsuit."

People around the world "need to hear the message of accountability this jury has sent," Ghitis observed.