Race, violence, and justice. How has race mattered in the rape trial I've been observing? 1. Yesterday, the defendant called his one and only witness. She's a former girlfriend, the mother of one of the alleged victims. They had a long Q&A or conversation, maybe 45 minutes. The judge interrupted them, periodically, supposedly for the sake of the court reporter (never the jury IIRC) sitting 3 feet from the witness, to tell them to speak more slowly or more loudly, not to speak over each other. But the problem wasn't their speed or volume, it was their 𝘈𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘌𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩 (see article below). 2. The defendant and the 4 victims are African American. But nearly everybody judging the case is (or passes as) white. The whites include the judge, the prosecution team (except 1), 10/12 jurors, the backup public defender, the victim advocates, the social workers (well, I missed 1 or 2), the clerk, the bailiff, and all the police o...
Conclusion of a rape trial in Cincinnati : Closing arguments. Verdict. Next steps. The accused nodded at me today and asked how I was doing. I asked him, too — He said that he did what he could and there were things he couldn’t say (due to objections sustained). But we were interrupted by a police officer, unlike other days, who said that I must not speak in the courtroom. After it was all over, I spoke with the prosecutor. She said that she finds the closing the most difficult part. She meant her statement, I think, though she seemed a bit nervous or hesitant in her rebuttal (below). She wondered whether this was the first time I ever sat through a whole trial (yes) and so she asked me for my impressions, compared to what I expected to see. I mentioned the intimacy of the courtroom, the familiarity among the professionals, the level of activity that the jury doesn’t see (which she said is much greater in other cases), and I appreciated the way she spoke respectfully, a...