Category: crime and punishment

A visit to Robben Island

September 8, 2024 • 8:15 am

If all goes well I’ll be flying home this evening, changing planes in Dulles after a 15-hour flight, and arriving in Chicago tomorrow morning. I’ll be a wreck, of course, but that’s expected after a long trip like that. Regular posting here will begin after I start recovering from jet lag.  But today we have a post on my visit (more of a pilgrimage, really) to Robben Island.

Like Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay, South Africa’s Robben Island has, in the last hundred years or more, served as a repository for the most ostracized of criminals, though Robben is most famous for the last century’s political prisoners rather than common criminals. And, of course, the most famous among these was Nelson Mandela, who spent 18 of his 27 years of incarceration on Robben (see his cell below).

And, like Alcatraz, Robben is within viewing distance of a lovely city (it’s 11 km from Cape Town), which of course would tantalize the prisoners, who could see freedom so close but still unattainable. Below is a Wikipedia aerial photo of Robben Island, with Cape Town and Table Mountain in the distance. The prison is the group of buildings directly in line with the wharf.

As far as I know, only one person, the black political prisoner David Stuurman, escaped from Robben Island. That was in the early 19th century, and he did it twice, by boat.  He eventually was deported to Australia, where he died. But, like Alcatraz, nobody is known to have escaped Robben by swimming. The water is cold and the distance to Cape Town is great.

Note that Robben is only a few meters above sea level, and its height is decreasing with global warming causing a rise in sea level.

South African Tourism from South Africa, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Robben Island is a UNESCO World Heritage site, so designated because of its “outstanding universal value”. The UNESCO page says this:

Robben Island was used at various times between the 17th century and the 20th century as a prison, a hospital for socially unacceptable groups, and a military base. Its buildings, and in particular those of the late 20th century maximum security prison for political prisoners, testify to the way in which democracy and freedom triumphed over oppression and racism.

What survives from its episodic history are 17th century quarries, the tomb of Hadije Kramat who died in 1755, 19th century ‘village’ administrative buildings including a chapel and parsonage, small lighthouse, the lepers’ church, the only remains of a leper colony, derelict World War II military structures around the harbour and the stark and functional maximum security prison of the Apartheid period began in the 1960s.

The symbolic value of Robben Island lies in its somber history, as a prison and a hospital for unfortunates who were sequestered as being socially undesirable. This came to an end in the 1990s when the inhuman Apartheid regime was rejected by the South African people and the political prisoners who had been incarcerated on the Island received their freedom after many years.

Criterion (iii): The buildings of Robben Island bear eloquent witness to its sombre history.

Criterion (vi):Robben Island and its prison buildings symbolize the triumph of the human spirit, of freedom and of democracy over oppression.

But really, I think that if Nelson Mandela hadn’t spent 18 of his 27 years in prison on Robben, and then gone on to win a Nobel Peace Prize and become President of South Africa as well as President of the African National Congress, then Robben wouldn’t be nearly as well known, or have become a tourist destination.

I went mainly because of Mandela, and especially to see the conditions he endured for 18 years. He is one of my heroes, and his refusal to promulgate divisive hatred after he was released and became President is one of the great conciliatory and humane gestures of history.

But we should remember that many other political prisoners—some of them very well nown—were housed there, too, often for decades. It was the maximum-security prison for blacks and Asians that the white government considered especially dangerous (no white prisoners were housed there, though all the guards were white).  And now that South Africa is a democracy, the site could indeed be feted as more than a place where Mandela was imprisoned: it could be seen as demonstrating the triumph of the human desire for freedom over bigotry and authoritarianism.

Tours to Robben Island take about 3.5 hours, with 1.5 hours or so traveling to the island and the other two hours for the tour, which consists of a bus drive around the island followed by a tour on foot with a guide, often a former inmate. You’re advised to book in advance, as the slots sell out quickly (I booked two weeks in advance.)

It was an overcast day, with clouds floating around Table Mountain, but the views of Cape Town and surrounding mountains were still spectacular both entering and leaving the harbor. As you can see, Table Mountain is flat like a table, looming high above the city. Taking the cable car to the top for the view is a must-do for visitors, but, sadly, I just couldn’t fit it in.

Below is the entry to the prison complex as well as the rest of the island, which still houses a town for those who maintain the site.  There is also a colony of African penguins (the same species as in Cape Town), as well as assorted smaller wildlife (see below).  Sadly, as in other places in South Africa, the penguin population is declining, almost certainly because of competition from human overfishing.

Below is the entrance to Robben Island, though I’m not at all sure it’s what the entrance looked like in the days of apartheid.  The site “Shadows on the Grass” says this about the entrance, and then goes on to describe how poorly the prisoners were treated:

These are the words written above the entrance gate to Robben Island. A sort of sick irony and blatant lie, symbolic of the methods used by the apartheid regime to try and break the spirit of the political prisoners from 1961 to 1991.

. . . . Originally named Robbeneiland, Dutch for Seal Island, the low lying kilometre wide piece of land is arid with no water sources. From 1836 to 1931, the island was used as a leper colony (Hansen’s Disease) and during the second World War, allied forces used it as a gun fortification.

During apartheid, the regime converted Robben Island into a maximum security prison. Between 1961 and 1991, over three thousand men was [sic] incarcerated for political crimes, including the former president and Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandela.

. . . The visitor center, near the front gate was used by prisoners as often as once every six months. Visits must be booked a year in advance, even though they lasted only a half hour in length. Often times, to break the spirits of the captives, guards would tell family members who had travelled from as far away as Namibia, JoBerg, and Natal that their loved ones were ill and could not come see their relatives behind the glass. At the same time they might tell the prisoners that the family had missed the ferry or could not afford the train down to Cape Town. Additionally, all conversation between visitors had to be conducted in Afrikaans or English, the languages of the guards- not their native tongues like Xhosa, isiZulu et… We also stopped at the lime quarry where prisoners like Madiba [Nelson Mandela] worked for 13 years in blinding light without protection or shoes. Many of the former prisoners have undergone eye procedures to correct sun and dust damage.

Our guide (see below) says that because many prisoners could speak neither Afrikaans nor English, and couldn’t speak their native languages under any circumstances when the guards were listening, the yearly half-hour visits were often conducted in silence.

A graveyard (taken from a fast-moving bus) where inhabitants of the island are buried. I’m not sure if any of these are prisoners as opposed to others who worked on the island or sufferers from leprosy (Hansen’s Disease):

Here is the limestone quarry where the prisoners worked—for many hours a day.  There was no need to have them do this, but the hard labor was consider part of their punishment. The harsh sunlight and glare from the rocks, combined with rock dust, hurt the eyes of many prisoners, including Mandela. 

Below: our guide, who was also a political prisoner. I asked him how long he spent on the island and he said “eighteen years”—the same as Mandela. He added that he was in as a political prisoner and also for having a firearm.

In the famous Rivonia Trial of 1964, Mandela and seven others were sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage and conspiring to overthrow the government through violent acts. Mandela admitted to sabotage but denied the other charges, and gave a famous three-hour speech, called “I am prepared to die” when the defense presented its case. This is the speech’s ending:

During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realised. But, My Lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

Mandela was to serve 18 years (1964-1982) on Robben Island and then spent 8 more years in two mainland prisons. He was finally released in 1990.

Besides working in the limestone quarry, the prisoners spent many days sitting the the courtyard outside their cell, breaking rocks. Here’s a photo of a photo hanging on the wall of the prison, showing the rock-breaking. This is the same courtyard where Mandela got the prison to allow a small garden, which, not coincidentally, is where he buried his political writings. See below for a modern view.

In memory of those times, Mandela, revisiting the island, put down a single rock, which was supplemented by single rocks added by other re-visiting prisoners. The picture and caption below show the rock pile from the Wikipedia article on Robben Island:

(from Wikipedia): Rock pile started by Nelson Mandela and added to—one rock at a time—by former prisoners returning to the island. Credit: D. Gordon E. Robertson, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Below: the house on the left was that of Robert Sobukwe (1924-1978), another anti-apartheid activist described by Wikipedia:

In March 1960, Sobukwe organized and launched a non-violent protest campaign against pass laws, for which he was sentenced to three years in prison on grounds of incitement. In 1963, the enactment of the “Sobukwe Clause,” allowed an indefinite renewal of his prison sentence, and Sobukwe was subsequently relocated to Robben Island for solitary confinement. At the end of his sixth year at Robben Island, he was released and placed under house arrest until his death in 1978.

But for reasons that are unclear, Sobukwe had privileges that other prisoners didn’t, although, unlike other prisoners, he was kept in solitary confinement.

Sobukwe was kept in solitary confinement but enjoyed a unique prisoner-plus status; he was permitted certain privileges including books, magazines, newspapers, civilian clothing, etc. He lived in a separate area on the island and was strictly prohibited from contact with other prisoners, though Sobukwe was able to communicate sporadically through visual signals while outside for exercise.

His house is the big house to the left; I presume the other buildings contain individual cells.

The buildings that held the political prisoners:

Some prisoners were allowed outside exercise and games; here’s a rugby field they constructed. (By the way, congrats to the Springboks for their victory over New Zealand’s All Blacks yesterday.)

This shows the food provided to prisoners, which differed according to their apartheid classification: Asians and “coloureds” (blacks with white genes) got food different from the “Bantus” (native African blacks). “Mealie meal” is corn porridge, presumably like “pap”.  Either way, the prisoners didn’t eat well (where are the vegetables?) and weren’t given much time to eat (just a few minutes in the limestone quarry, we were told):

Prisoners were allowed to receive and to write one letter every six months, but these were read and censored, with any material eliminated that might be considered political. Here’s one censored letter from Durban displayed on the wall of the prison:

The first part of the waking tour of the prison involved showing us two large halls, one full of bunk beds. I’m not sure what these were, as I was was too far behind the guide to hear him, but perhaps they were for non-political prisoners. If you’ve been to Robben or know the answer, please weigh in below.

Mandela was instrumental in getting the prison to allow a small garden to be planted in the courtyard.

The garden area (below) had little greenery (perhaps it was the time of year) and one leafless apple tree. It served more than just a place to see a little greenery, for it was in this garden that Mandela buried some of his political writings, including the manuscript of his best-selling autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, not published until 1994.

When we were in the “garden” area, our guide told us that Mandela’s cell was the fourth window on the right above, and of course I waited until the group had passed so I could see it and photograph it without a crowd.

Here’s where the man spent 18 years. It’s only about 6 m²  (7 x 9 feet).  The electric light was kept on in all the cells night and day. Prisoners, as you can see, slept on the floor on a mat, and had almost no amenities. Here we see a table, a plate, cup, and utensil, and what looks like a slop bucket.

Another view, this time taken with a flash.  Mandela did his writing at night, which I believe extended from 6 pm to 6 am.

Here’s the outside of the prison taken as a panorama. Click the photo to enlarge it.

While exiting the grounds I came upon this turtle. Reader Divy and her husband, who run a veterinary business and have extensive knowledge of reptiles, agreed this is an Angulate tortoise (Chersina angulata), known to be found in Robben Island.

On the way to the exit from the grounds was this room, which was an office without any X-ray machines. I suspect it was part of the facilities used when the prison was in operation.

And the exit to the harbor (the other side of the entrance).  I imagined how happy a prisoner was to be walking out this gate to freedom.

Finally, after a choppy trip back to the mainland, we encountered a trio of brown fur seals (Arctocephalus pusillus). There are two subspecies with a curiously disjunct distribution, one living at the southern tip of Africa and the other in a strip of southeast Australia.

And, with the sight of a proud seal, we’re back.

The usual holiday weekend in Chicago: 109 shot, 19 killed

July 9, 2024 • 10:15 am

Actually, this was an unusually homicidal weekend given that it lasted from Thursday (the Fourth of July holiday) through Sunday: four days of shooting opportunities.  And the bad actors were out in force: as everyone reports, there were 109 people shot in that period, 19 of whom died. From ABC News:

One hundred and nine people were shot, 19 fatally, in gun violence across Chicago from midnight Wednesday to midnight Monday during the extended Fourth of July holiday weekend, police said.

CPD Supt. Larry Snelling and Mayor Brandon Johnson both called for accountability for those responsible for the shootings during a press conference on Monday.

“This is a choice. The choice to kill. The choice to kill women, the choice to kill children, the choice to kill the elderly. These are choices that the offenders made and they calculated,” Johnson said. “We are holding every single individual accountable for the pain and from the torment that they have caused in this city.”

Chicago Mayor Johnson and Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling give an update after more than 100 people were shot in Chicago over the 4th of July weekend.

Snelling said adjustments were made after the Fourth of July heading into the weekend, including canceling officers’ days off, but ultimately, he said, they need communities to come forward.

“We have to really stop and think about the mindset of someone who will shoot a child, a helpless child an unarmed mother and think that that’s OK. And go about their days,” he said. “Those people have to be taken off the street. They have to be put away if we’re not doing that. Then we’re failing other families.”

Johnson said he has asked for more resources from the federal government to help invest more resources into communities.

When pressed to address what adjustments need to be made to keep the community safe, Johnson’s response was simply that the city needs more support.

“I am urging all of you across the entire city to step up and say, ‘We’ve had enough,'” Johnson said. “And I’m hopeful that our ongoing discussions will ensure that our state partners, as well as our federal partners, will swiftly come into the support of the city of Chicago. The city cannot afford to wait any longer.”

Well, if you’re a determinist, it’s not really a choice: you could not have done otherwise but pull the trigger. But of course future shootings can be reduced by modifying incentives, behavior, and so on, so determinism doesn’t justify this level of shooting. Further, gun control is vital, but almost useless to fight for given America’s love of guns. (One bright spot: a week ago the Supreme Court decided to leave in place Illinois’s ban on assault-style weapons.)

Brandon Johnson talks the talk, but he doesn’t walk the walk, and weapons are one of the things he needs to deal with as Mayor (not to mention our many potholes that go unfilled). My prediction is that he will not be re-elected, as he’s perceived as a do-nothing mayor. Look at his response when asked what he will do to stop the killings!

One assault occurred only a few blocks from my office on Sunday morning. While driving to the grocery store at 7 a.m., I found my route blocked off by many police cars and “do not enter” tape. I took a roundabout way to the store, and the street was still blocked off when I came back. It turns out that right by the University, three people had been shot at 5:30 that morning. Thank Ceiling Cat that none were killed. And the shooting was only a block from our Emergency Room, so treatment must have been timely.

I suspect this was a gang-related shooting, but the aim was poor: two guys were shot in the leg and one in the nose. (How you can be shot in the nose and survive eludes me, but perhaps the guy was standing in profile.)

Coleman Hughes on the death of George Floyd and Derek Chauvin’s trial and conviction

June 17, 2024 • 11:15 am

I’ve been meaning to write about this issue for a while, as I covered the beginning of it (see all posts here).  And the longer I delayed, the more complicated the issue became, until I became unable to remember everything, much less synthesize it.

The story in short: two people made a documentary movie, “The Fall of Minneapolis” (watch it here) maintaining that George Floyd was not murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, but died of his many ailments (including a big titer of fentanyl in his blood), not from having his neck compressed so that he was asphyxiated. (Nor, the movie maintained, was his neck really compressed: Chauvin was supposedly using procedures taught him by his department).  The movie convinced both John McWhorter and Glenn Loury, as well as me, that Chauvin was not guilty of murder—at least if you use the “reasonable doubt” standards mandated in such a case.

Then a former Washington Post reporter, Radley Balko, wrote a multipart attack on the movie on his webpage arguing that the thesis of “The Fall of Minneapolis” was wrong on several counts, including its claim that Floyd was not asphyxiated.  Balko’s analysis was enough to convince Loury (and, to some extent, McWhorter) that they were wrong—that perhaps Chauvin really did murder Floyd. Having read all this stuff, and intending to post on it, the sheer magnitude of the task defeated me. But I felt remiss in not calling attention to Balko’s attack. And I couldn’t come to my own conclusions, for essential material, like the training procedure for Minneapolis police, was missing.

In January, Coleman Hughes, now an essayist for The Free Press, wrote a piece arguing that Chauvin was not a murderer but a scapegoat for all those who wanted him convicted for supposedly killing a black man.  Hughes and Balko went back and forth about having a debate, and eventually had one, but one that, says Coleman, was stacked because the moderators were on Balko’s side.

Now we have the longest article yet published in the Free Press, a second piece by Coleman Hughes reiterating his claim that Chauvin should not have been found guilty of the murder of Floyd. His claim, as you’ll see below (click on the headline to read) is not that Chauvin was clearly innocent, but that the standards of evidence supposed to be applied by the jury, involving “reasonable doubt,” would have found such doubt in the prosecution’s evidence against Chauvin. Ergo, Chauvin should have been found not guilty.

The article is informative and, to me, convincing—Chauvin seems to have gotten a bad trial, including jurors biased against the prosecution, a prosecution that didn’t properly give the evidence, a defense that didn’t do its job, a judge who didn’t seem to know what was going on, and the venue (and the judge’s instructions) terrifying the jurors that if they didn’t find Chauvin guilty, there would be riots.

Read it; it has all the links that you need, including to Balko’s work and the debate.

Here’s Coleman’s main points in the essay:

The purpose of this essay is to set the record straight on Balko’s claims, which range from useful counterarguments to misleading assertions and outright errors. Our disagreements fall into two basic categories: the first is the question of how exactly Floyd died. And the second pertains to whether or not Chauvin was following his training.

One final, important note before I dive in: Balko’s series generally mischaracterizes my essay as arguing for the definite truth of various propositions—or doing a “just asking questions” routine—when in fact I was arguing for the existence of reasonable doubt.

In a typical debate, each side is trying to prove a claim by summoning more evidence than the other side—“guns are helpful” vs. “guns are harmful,” for instance. The burden assigned to each side is symmetric. If either side summons more evidence than the other, then that side wins.

Criminal trials are deliberately not like this. They are highly asymmetric—and that’s intentional.

It’s not enough for a majority of the evidence to indicate guilt. And it’s not enough if the defendant’s guilt is “highly and substantially more likely to be true than untrue.” That is the “clear and convincing evidence” standard.

Rather, “beyond a reasonable doubt” means that “there is no other reasonable explanation that can come from the evidence presented at trial” other than the defendant having committed the crime in question. Keep that phrase—no other reasonable explanation—at the top of your mind. My Free Press piecewas written from the perspective of reasonable doubt. In the essay, I summed up my thesis like this: “In short, there are two major justifications to reasonably doubt Chauvin’s felony murder charge: whether he caused Floyd’s death and whether he committed a felony.”

There remains significant uncertainty about the death of George Floyd—uncertainty that was not settled at trial. My purpose in this essay, as in my original column, is not to settle that uncertainty for good by putting forward a definitive version of events—that is not the defense’s burden anyway. My purpose is to convey the existence of other reasonable explanations.

With that throat-clearing out of the way, let’s move on to Balko’s substantive arguments.

The arguments turn on what really killed George Floyd (he had several medical conditions and was full of drugs), whether the restraint technique used by Floyd really involved asphyxiation, whether that technique was part of the regular training, verbal or written, by the Minneapolis police, what “homicide” means to a coroner versus a jury, whether the jury was tainted by people who were pro-Floyd to begin with, and what are the criteria for conviction.  And more.

Read it for yourself; I’ll simply give Hughes’s conclusions in brief:

I think there was clearly reasonable doubt on whether Chauvin caused Floyd’s death. There were two rival theories of his death: the positional asphyxia theory (put forth by Dr. Tobin and endorsed by the prosecution), and the adrenaline surge theory (put forth by Dr. Baker and rejected by the prosecution). Both were reasonable theories, but only the former implicated Chauvin. That alone should have introduced reasonable doubt on all three charges.

As for whether Chauvin assaulted Floyd—that is, whether he used unlawful force outside the scope of MPD training—reasonable people can disagree on whether there was reasonable doubt. Balko would emphasize that MPD [Minneapolis Police Department] officers were trained to worry about positional asphyxia, move people to the side-recovery position as soon as possible, and use the hobble.

. . . .What are the odds that Chauvin received a trial in accordance with these instructions? Given the jurors who spoke about their fears for their physical safety, given the juror who was found wearing a “GET YOUR KNEE OFF OUR NECKS” t-shirt before the trial, given that everyone knew the city would burn if he was acquitted yet the trial location wasn’t changed, and given that the jury wasn’t sequestered in one of the most talked-about trials in modern American history—I would submit that the odds are close to zero.

Ultimately, we’ll never know how a jury might have weighed the evidence under even halfway normal conditions. And it is probably too late for any of this to matter for Chauvin himself. What is clear, however, is that there were many reasons to doubt that Chauvin was guilty of the crimes he was charged with, and the American public should not be afraid to say so.

Once again, this is a complicated issue that you should judge for yourself, ideally after having watched the movie, read Balko’s ripostes, and having read at least Hughes’s second essay: the one quoted here.  Chauvin’s conviction for murdering Floyd spawned the “racial reckoning” that has persisted until today, and regardless of whether we need a reckoning or not, the conviction that started it all needs to be carefully examined. More important, the conviction of a man for a “crime” that carries reasonable doubt is a miscarriage of justice that needs to be rectified (Chauvin is serving 22 years in prison, and will be 60 when he’s released). In my view, they need to try Chauvin again, but bringing in all the evidence and with a jury that is not intimidated.

This is what happens to a bicycle in Hyde Park

June 13, 2024 • 3:23 pm

I walked by this pathetic specimen of a bicycle on my way home today. Note that while it is still locked up with a sturdy lock, most of the rest of it has been stolen. It is an ex-bicycle, singing with the choir invisible. The only thing I wonder is whether it’s possible to lock a bike so it doesn’t get stripped this way.

Bill Maher on America’s screwed-up prison system

June 10, 2024 • 12:00 pm

Here’s Bill Maher’s monologue from his latest episode of Real Time. It’s a serious (but humorous) look at America’s deeply dysfunctional prison system, but beginning with speculation about Trump getting raped in prison.

As I’ve written ad nauseam, America deliberately creates prisons to be horrible, demoralizing, and—in the extreme form of SuperMax prisons—liable to drive their inmates insane. All of this comes from the belief that prisoners had free will when they did their crime, and thus must undergo severe retribution.  Yes, incarceration can be useful for keeping bad people out of society, helpin reform them, and even detering others from criminality, but retribution? If you’re a determinist, it doesn’t make sense.  That’s why enlightened countries like Norway treat their prisoners like human beings. That may explain why Norway’s recidivism rate is about a quarter of America’s (rates mentioned in the video below).

The whole justice system—not just in America but nearly everywhere—is based on the assumption that criminals could have avoided doing their crimes—that they have libertarian free will. Thus they must be punished for making the wrong “choice.” Both Robert Sapolsky and I, diehard determinists, think that one of the biggest implications of determinism is the pressing need for judicial reform.  And this attitude als0 pervades Maher’s monologue.

This is really a video op-ed, and I can’t help but believe that, at least for the video generation, it’s more effective than a serious piece in the New York Times.

h/t: Leo

Trump convicted on all 34 felony counts in hush-money case

May 30, 2024 • 4:31 pm

OMFG, as they say: the news just came down that Trump was convicted on all 34 felony counts in his New York hush-money trial. That’s 34 out of 34, and each conviction required unanimity among the jurors.  They deliberated for less than two days.

He will appeal, of course, but will he go to jail eventually?

He’s now a convicted felon. I can’t say I’m unhappy. Here are the details from yahoo! news:

Donald Trump was convicted of falsifying business records to influence the 2016 presidential campaign Thursday in a historic trial that saw a former U.S. president face criminal charges for the first time.

A New York jury found Trump guilty of 34 counts, related to a $130,000 payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. The prosecution had alleged Daniels was paid to keep secret a 2006 tryst she had with Trump in order to influence the results of the 2016 election, which Trump ultimately won.

The trial lasted a month and a half and was plenty eventful. In addition to the fiery testimonies of Daniels and Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, Trump was held in contempt of court 10 times and fined $10,000 for violating a gag order against attacking people involved with the trial. Many Republican leaders, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, traveled to New York to speak out in support of the 2024 Republican presidential candidate.

Trump, who did not testify in his defense, has yet to be sentenced in the case and is likely to appeal the verdict. The result may have an impact on Trump’s chances to reclaim the White House, however. Recent Yahoo News/YouGov polling suggested a conviction would hurt Trump in head-to-head polling against President Joe Biden.

Since it’s a state crime, he can’t pardon himself, either, even if he does get reelected.

Well, if conviction on 34 felony counts HELPS him win, then something is badly wrong with America.

And there are several more trials to go. .

John McWhorter: Some white Americans would applaud O. J. Simpson’s acquittal today, and that would show racial progress

April 19, 2024 • 9:30 am

I hope John McWhorter’s latest column, which I see as misguided, doesn’t show that he’s running out of gas. His point is to show that substantial progress in racial relations between blacks and whites has occurred over the years. But who could deny that? African-Americans are represented far more in the media than they were when I was a kid, they are beneficiaries of Civil Rights Acts passed in the Sixties, there is affirmative action so that universities and businesses are far more integrated, and one sees and hears far less bigotry than was evident to me as a kid. Do we need more evidence.

McWhorter has given ample evidence of this progress before, and gives more in this column, including a bit on how Mother Jefferson (Zara Cully, a black woman), despite being a better actress on television than was Mother Dexter (Judith Lowry, a white actress) on “Phyllis”, was given short shrift. That wouldn’t happen today, and black actors are getting far more roles, and good ones, than they used to.

Despite this palpable progress in racial relations—progress that, if you listen to some black activists, is illusory—McWhorter says, correctly, that overall black people are treated worse than white people by the police, and have been for years:

For Black people in Los Angeles recalling how the L.A.P.D. had treated them for decades, for Black people in Philadelphia not long past the all but open racism of the police force there under Mayor Frank Rizzo, for Black people in Chicago remembering the racist profiling and abuse by the cops called the Flying Squad, the sheer fact of a Black man getting off on a murder charge was of epic significance. If anything, the fact that he was obviously guilty only amplified the victory.

For all the statistical discrepancies between Black and white Americans, interactions with the police may be the central driver of how many Black people experience racism. I noted this in my research and conversations in preparation for my book “Losing the Race” in the late 1990s, when I was sincerely trying to figure out why so many Black people spoke of racism almost as if it were the 1890s rather than the 1990s. There is a reason that the main focus of the Black Panthers was combating police brutality, that anti-cop animus was central to gangsta rap and that today Black Lives Matter may be more influential than the N.A.A.C.P.

Well, I won’t comment on whether the differential influence in the last sentence is true, or, if true, is a good thing; but differential police treatment of races surely accounts for the different reactions of blacks and whites to O. J. Simpson’s acquittal of murder in 1995. And to McWhorter, that difference would be reduced today. McWhorter calls this “progress in race relations”. I think that, if it were true, it would be progress in performative antiracism, but not genuine progress.  But read his column by clicking on the headline, or find the article archived here:

 

First, McWhorter makes it clear, as it is be to anyone with neurons, that O. J. was guilty as hell of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. McWhorter makes that view clear several times, including in the first paragraph, where he describes the racial differences in reaction to Simpson’s acquittal (all bolding is mine):

Among the signature images of O.J. Simpson’s acquittal of the murders of his ex-wife and her friend was the contrasting tableaus of Black people grouping in front of television screens applauding while white people watching it were shaking their heads — appalled, perplexed and even disgusted by a verdict that flew in the face of obvious fact. Those contrasting perspectives have gone down as demonstrating a gulf of understanding between the races.

That gulf persists, but it narrows apace, and if the verdict came down today, it would be a lot less perplexing to many white people than it was back then. Many would understand why the jury acted as it did. We might even see some of them applauding along with Black people.

To McWhorter, that last sentence instantiates racial progress, but more on that later.  More on his opinion of Simpson’s guilt:

The evidence of Simpson’s deed was overwhelming despite the ineptitude of the prosecution team. The verdict and the response to it among the Black community weren’t signs of support for Simpson; they were protests against a long legacy of mistreatment and even murder at the hands of the police.

. . . the sheer fact of a Black man getting off on a murder charge was of epic significance. If anything, the fact that he was obviously guilty only amplified the victory.

I agree with McWhorter. I was on Simpson’s defense team, and the DNA material I got must be kept confidential. But I will say that it’s my personal opinion, from all the evidence that came out during the trial and thereafter, that Simpson was guilty as hell. But the prosecution apparently could not convince the jury that he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, so he walked. (DNA evidence, for one thing, seemed to only confuse the jury. And then there was the glove and the racism of Mark Furman.)

So a black man, in the face of all the evidence (and yes, the prosecution was inept) was acquitted of murder. Black people applauded because, though perhaps many thought him guilty, his acquittal represented a black man beating a racist system. White people groaned because many also thought him guilty, and there may also have been some racism in that reaction.

I can fully understand these reactions. But understanding them doesn’t mean I approve of them.. A man was on trial for his life, yet he was apparently being judged by the public on his pigmentation and historical racism by cops. If you thought he was guilty but applauded the verdict because Simpson was black, you’ve judged the system, not the man.

And now McWhorter avers that if the trial took place today, it’s likely that, because of improved racial relations, many white people would also judge the system and join blacks in applauding the verdict:

Today I see white people far more aware. That’s why when I fast-forward the Simpson verdict to 2024, I picture some white people getting the news on their phones and doing high-fives and group hugs, some of them in tears. They would be no more likely to see Simpson himself as a hero than were the jurors of 1995, especially given that modern America is more sensitized not only to racism but also to abuse of women. But they would be more likely to see the acquittal as a kind of payback for all of the white cops who have been exonerated for murdering Black people. It would be processed, I imagine, as a teaching moment of sorts.

This smacks strongly of Robin DiAngelo. High-fiving and group hugs as a reaction to Simpson’s acquittal is a performative act: it’s saying, “Look, I understand that black people are mistreated by the cops! I’m not a racist!”  But if you’re celebrating and still thought Simpson did the crimes, then you’re happy because a guilty man went free—and only because that guilty man was black. To me, that’s making Simpson stand for all blacks, though, as McWhorter notes, Simpson really wasn’t considered part of the black community,and was not an activist. A verdict should be judged on the content of the man’s crime, not on the color of his skin.

Others may agree with McWhorter, but I think this hypothetical scenario, if it occurred, would be evidence not of real racial progress, but of performative antiracism by whites. If you see that as progress, so be it. I can give a lot of harder evidence that there’s been racial progress in the past three decades, and especially in the past six decades. You don’t need to make up some dumb scenario to show this, just as a way to mark Simpson’s death.

As for me, I am a white man who always thought Simpson guilty. His acquittal was bad for society (look what happened to him afterwards), and that was the last trial in which I acted as an expert witness for DNA.  I didn’t see the acquittal as a sign of improved racial relations, but as a miscarriage of justice largely due to the incompetence of the prosecution. I ran out of gas at the moment he was acquitted, and from then on turned down all requests by defense lawyers to use me as an expert witness.

If the acquittal happened today, I would not be high-fiving others, crying, or engaging in group hugs. That doesn’t prove that I’m a racist, because I agree that cops treat blacks worse than whites. But I also believe in evidence, and the evidence adduced in the Simpson case, and revealed soon after by reporters, is not a reason to celebrate his acquittal.

And I’m wondering why McWhorter had to confect this hypothetical, performative scenario to demonstrate that racial relations have improved in America.

McWhorter:

All that leads me to think that America has a problem with police violence in general. But here’s the thing: I am accustomed to vigorous resistance to that argument from not only Black but white people, too.

It is in this context that the stark racial divide in the reception of the Simpson verdict three decades ago seems rather antique. There has been, regardless of the disagreements that inevitably persist, progress.

There are, I’m sure, better ways to show progress.

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“If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit”: