In Two Big Murder Cases Before Two Juries Today, the American Justice System Is Also on Trial

Religious leaders sing at the Glynn County Courthouse as a jury was selected for the Ahmaud Arbery trial. Sean Rayford / Getty Images

The nation is once again riveted by high-profile murder trials. The first is of 18-year old Kyle Rittenhouse, a self-identified militia member and avid Trump supporter who killed two people and injured a third with his AR-15 assault style rifle after he traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin during the protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake last year. The second trial is of three men who stalked and killed Ahmaud Arbery in cold blood in the small, coastal city of Brunswick, Georgia where Arbery had been jogging.

In both cases, there is shocking video showing the moment of the murders. In both cases, white defendants claim to have been acting to protect against a “property crime” but in fact took active steps to place themselves in dangerous situations where their own weapons would pose a threat to lives of others. And in both cases, there are deep and disturbing reveals about how the justice system works one way for white defendants and another way for Black and other minority defendants.

In the Rittenhouse trial, the judge already has issued rulings that are making headlines and outraging many observers, including insisting that the people Rittenhouse shot should not be referred to by the prosecution as “victims” because the term is too “loaded” and could sway the jury. He has blocked evidence of Rittenhouse in another video commenting that he wanted to shoot people he thought were looters. Similarly, evidence of Rittenhouse posing for pictures with the Proud Boys, who used his name to promote a rally in Portland, was excluded. Concerns over the judge’s bias were underscored when his cellphone went off in court recently and the ringtone was “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood—a conservative standard played at Trump rallies whenever the former president takes the stage.

In the trial of Arbery’s murderers—Gregory and Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan, Jr.—initial attention was on the dismaying racial make-up of the jury. In a county that is over 26 percent Black, with 1,000 some odd people interviewed and questioned by the prosecution and defense lawyers, in the end 11 out of 12 of the jurors on the panel are white, and only one is black. As NPR reported, prosecutors repeatedly objected to the defense counsel’s striking of Black citizens from the jury, calling it unconstitutional. And while the judge agreed that there was “intentional discrimination in the panel,” he claimed he was unable to restore any jurors who had been dismissed, saying the defense had offered race-neutral reasons for eliminating them.

Like the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, these trials have put not only the defendants on trial but the entire U.S. justice system. It is a tragic but common feature of our courts that white defendants will be coddled and that white juries will more likely acquit them. It’s so common that it almost goes unnoticed by anyone outside of the communities affected. (Whenever I hear outrage from white liberals about why someone like Steve Bannon is still not arrested, I urge a moment of empathy: How must it feel, then, to have justice promised one way and then denied utterly for your community, not just once but repeatedly for centuries?)

I sadly do not have strong faith that real justice will be served here in either case. That would be a blow not just to the families of the victims (yes, victims) but also to the public’s faith in our judicial system. When an all-white jury acquitted the LAPD officers who beat Rodney King, an incident that also was captured on video for all to see, it set off days of deadly race riots. The anger could no longer be contained, and it simply boiled over. That is the price for our failure to insist upon and enforce the principle of blind justice.

These two cases demonstrate, once again, that it is color that judges, juries, lawyers and defendants still see and act upon, often even consciously as the lawyers in Arbery trial have done. Whether we will overcome this today and return convictions rather than acquittals, despite our deeply flawed and biased court system, remains to be seen. The consequences of a very public failure here could be a return to last year’s civil chaos in our cities’ streets—the very kind of strife that helped fuel Rittenhouse’s brand of murderous vigilantism and, at least in the minds of racial terrorists, somehow justifies the horrific execution of an innocent Black jogger.

True justice could break this despair-ridden cycle. But if developments in the two cases are any indication, the cycle appears more than likely to continue.