Guilty verdicts were handed down last week for Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and William Bryan, the three men charged in the 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Also last week, right wing groups who organized the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017 were found to be liable, while Kyle Rittenhouse walked free in Wisconsin.
What do the results of these three different cases say about the American criminal justice system and the country's so-called “racial reckoning”? Ron Sullivan, Harvard Law professor and director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard and Renée Graham, Boston Globe columnist and associate editor, joined Jim Braude on Greater Boston to discuss.
Graham noted that it took 74 days for the McMichaels to be charged with murder, only after a video emerged. “This was an important verdict, but it was also one verdict in one case," she said.
“It’s not a ‘turning point’ and it’s not a ‘reckoning,’” she continued. “The fact that this outcome was in doubt until the moment the judge announced that the McMichaels and William Bryan were found guilty, does not speak highly of a system in which so few people have faith or expect accountability.”
Sullivan echoed Graham’s view, saying that while the decision was a step in the right direction, it “doesn’t represent a systemic change… We have to remain vigilant because the system as a whole still is deeply flawed and problematic.”
WATCH: What do verdicts in Kenosha, Charlottesville and Brunswick say about America's criminal justice system?
