“Derek Chauvin is the Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd. I don’t have to say “allegedly” killed, because I saw it. Floyd was alive, and then, eight minutes and 46 seconds later, he was not, and the only intervening event that happened was Chauvin’s knee on his neck. Chauvin’s trial started this week, and soon a jury, comprised mainly of white people (of this we can be almost certain), will tell us whether they think killing a Black man should be a crime. In a reasonable world, this trial would be perfunctory. Hell, in a reasonable world, there wouldn’t even be a trial: Chauvin would have accepted some kind of plea deal. That’s what most people do when they are caught on camera killing someone. But we don’t live in a reasonable world—we live in a white one. Chauvin is white, and he’s a cop. And his victim was Black. In most situations, that’s all you need to get away with murder. Chauvin’s attorneys will likely argue that something else killed Floyd during the nearly nine minutes Chauvin was suffocating him. They will claim that Floyd had some underlying health problem that made him more vulnerable to vicious police brutality than the average Black man or that something happened before the video that justified the brutality caught on camera. They will declare that Floyd’s death was “tragic,” but fundamentally Floyd’s fault. Somehow. […] The process of stacking the jury in Chauvin’s favor started this week. For those new to the art of jury selection, it’s a deeply flawed process. Citizens are summoned to the courthouse, via mail, and unless they can come up with a good excuse for why they can’t show up, they have to appear, usually for a couple of days. If a trial starts during that period, some of them may be randomly selected to fill out a questionnaire. The answers to that questionnaire are given under penalty of perjury, but people rarely check. Then, these prospective jurors are questioned, one by one, by the attorneys in the case (and the judge if they choose to do so). After the questioning, called the “voir dire,” lawyers are given the option to exercise what’s called a “peremptory challenge.” These challenges allow lawyers to strike potential jurors on the suspicion of bias, except that lawyers don’t have to explain or prove why they think a particular juror is unfit to serve. Lawyers can strike jurors for any reason, or no reason at all. Peremptory challenges give lawyers wide discretion in shaping the jury and can be abused. Technically, for instance, you’re not allowed to strike a juror just because of their race. But as long as the striking lawyer can give a facially race-neutral reason, the exclusion of that juror will stand. So, you couldn’t strike a juror for being “Black” but you absolutely could strike a juror for listening to rap music. […] But prosecutors had video of Officer Betty Shelby shooting Terence Crutcher to death on a highway in Oklahoma in 2016, while surrounded by other police and helicopter support, and she was acquitted. They had video of NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo choking Eric Garner to death in broad daylight in 2014, and he wasn’t even charged. They had video of LAPD officers beating the hell out of Rodney King. And those cops were acquitted by a jury of their “peers.” It only takes one white person who thinks the cops should be allowed to hunt and murder Black people to hang a jury. The jury system is set up by white people, and one of its primary functions is to let white people go free when they kill Black people. Maybe that system will fail this time, allowing justice to be done. But I wouldn’t count on it.”
Elie Mystal wrote an excellent article for The Nation on the Derek Chauvin Trial explaining the jury system could end up letting Chauvin off for murdering George Floyd, which would trigger nationwide riots that make last summer’s look like a high school baseball game.
