Injustice anywhere

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” On April 16, 1963, long before the showdown on the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Selma, Alabama, on that “Bloody Sunday” in March of 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. was sitting in a Birmingham jail for participating in a civil rights demonstration. This quote is just a slice of his famous essay in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” written to his fellow clergy about why he believed in non-violent protest.

His voice still grabs us today as we reflect on some recent events. Two recent criminal trials involving tragic deaths had dramatically different results and certainly further divide us as a country. Each trial had its own nuances with a rather surprising guilty verdict and a not guilty verdict that threatens to tear a community apart.

In July of 2014, Conrad Roy III was an 18-year-old troubled teenager trying to sort through his problems in Taunton, Massachusetts. His “virtual friend” of two years was Michelle Carter, then 17 years old, equally troubled, suffering from an eating disorder and desperate for friendship and acknowledgment from her peers. Mr. Roy wanted to kill himself. This had been going on for about two weeks with text messages back and forth between the teenagers, and Ms. Carter urging him to commit suicide. He had been researching ways of killing himself and obtained a generator and water pump as the means for causing his own death. He filled his truck with noxious gases and stepped outside to talk to Ms. Carter on the phone one last time. She supposedly told him to go back into it and kill himself and listened to him die.

But this phone conversation was not recorded. She had sent a text message to a friend three months after Mr. Roy’s death saying “his death is my fault” and that she told him to “get back in.” This became the core piece of evidence in a manslaughter trial against Ms. Carter. Shockingly, the trial judge accepted this as evidence of a “guilty mind” of Mr. Roy’s suicide and holding Ms. Carter responsible for his death in telling him to get back into the truck and not calling for help. She faces up to 20 years in prison for this phone call and her “guilty” text message to another friend. Yes, a troubled young woman is looking at going to prison for a phone call and a text message.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Jeronimo Yanez was just tried for shooting Philando Castile during a simple July 2016 traffic stop, which escalated into a homicide for no good reason. Officer Yanez pulled Mr. Castile over for a broken taillight. As he approached the open car window, Mr. Castile tried to warn Mr. Yanez that he had a permit to carry a firearm and the gun was in the car. On a live video recorded by his girlfriend, and mother of his 4-year-old daughter (both also passengers in the car), he supposedly repeatedly can be heard telling Officer Yanez not to be afraid about him having a gun.

Despite Mr. Castile’s pleas, Officer Yanez opened fire into Mr. Castile’s body at point-blank range, not just once or twice, but seven times. Mr. Castile died pleading for Officer Yanez to not harm him. Mr. Castile never had a weapon out or pointed at Officer Yanez. The jury hearing the case had to determine if Officer Yanez acted reasonably or not.

They would have been instructed that Officer Yanez, as a police officer, was justified in killing Mr. Castile, if he was in fear for his life — it is unlikely a civilian would have received similar jury instructions.

Officer Yanez gets this extra legal protection for two reasons. First, he is supposed to be a trained professional on when, and when not, to use lethal force. He is exposed in his training to high-octane scenarios where there is an adrenaline rush of fear, even if this is just a poor substitute for real life. Second, as a police officer, he is dealing with potentially deadly traffic stops (and domestic violence complaints), which are literally life and death experiences. The law gave Officer Yanez extra leeway to be wrong and the jury’s decision is not a wrong one (as they were instructed). This was not a case of a jury with ill will.

This is no solace to Mr. Castile’s little girl, now without a father, and the St. Anthony community in which he lived. Mr. Castile was, yet, another African-American killed by a police officer who “walks away” a free person from having committed a homicide. This not guilty verdict was actually one of three in the span of a week or so where officers were acquitted of needlessly gunning down African-Americans.

It is hard to find the justice in these decisions or scrub the irony of race from the results. Ms. Carter (a white woman) was found guilty of killing someone (a white man) because of mere words, while Officer Yanez (a white Hispanic officer) was acquitted of seven poor decisions in killing an innocent black man. What we might all agree, though, is that there is a whiff of injustice in these opposing verdicts. These two sad situations might be learning lessons toward building a more just system. We all benefit from justice everywhere.

Local attorney Jim Rockefeller owns the Rockefeller Law Center and is a former Houston County chief assistant district attorney and a former Miami prosecutor. Visit www.rockefellerlawcenter.com to submit confidential legal questions and to review former articles and frequently asked questions.

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