HoonToon

Went to go see the movie bout some pretty amazing digging

this was my favourite part

An innocent man is home with his family instead of spending his kids' whole childhoods in jail for "resisting arrest" when none of the cops could agree on why he was being arrested in the first place. (But it definitely had nothing to do with him being a Black man in a nice car, honest! 🙄)

And it still took like two hours of delibration after we'd heard all the evidence because one lady was so gung ho about believing everything the cops said, even when not a single goddamn one could agree with their own testimony, let alone their colleagues'.

Pointing out all the inconsistencies and admitted misconduct and letting people slowly come to their own conclusions as the trial played out was fucking hard, I won't lie. I can be patient, but it doesn't come naturally to me.

But. Yelling about how this was obviously a bs case would have shut everyone down and made them stop listening. Asking questions and letting people discuss how the cops tried to make xyz sound suspicious but it was totally normal, or about how if things played out the way the cops said then logically events should have proceeded in a totally different direction, and positing different theories that actually lined up with the evidence presented?

That got people thinking, and everyone realized that for a variety of reasons we all had reasonable doubts that the defendent had committed any of the crimes of which he was accused.

10 years ago, I got as far as making it into the courtroom for the final selection process.

Most of other guys in the waiting room with me were male, white, older than 40 with the kind grey-haired-but-chiselled features that you only get from being affluent from birth.

We go inside the courtroom. The case was about a black male who had intentionally damaged some property (I don't recall the details). After most of the other members were dismissed, the judge, (black female), pulled some of us aside to begin grilling us individually. When she gets to me, even after seeing the what the waiting room looked like, I STILL declared said education history because I was an idiot. It was almost as if saying "human services with a minor in sociology" got me kicked.

It probably didn't help that I'm poc, either.

This is the modus operandi to carry when you live in a sketchy area.