Sean Bell Verdict: It May Be Legal But It's Not Right
by Mel Reeves
"A judge rendered a racist and classist verdict consistent
with the racist and classist law."
"We're a nation of laws so we respect the verdict that came
down," was Senator Barack Obama's response to the obviously unjust verdict
handed down by Judge ArthurCooperman in the trial of three New York City police
officers accused of wrongfully killing
Sean Bell and wounding his companions, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield.
New York Mayor Micheal Bloomberg seemed to parrot Senator Obama when he said,
"America is a nation of laws, and though not everyone will agree with the
verdicts and opinions issued by the courts, we accept their authority."
I take issue with the bourgeois politicians. While the
verdict may indeed have been considered legal, it clearly did not meet even a
modicum of what any reasonable mind would consider just, thus it may have been
legal but it wasn't justice.
What was apparent in the response of many Americans to this
verdict, both white and black, was that most people recognized that something
wrong had clearly happened and that the judge's decision did not represent what
most consider fairness, plain old common sense, or justice in any shape or
form. Black folks were rightfully outraged because it was another example of
un-color blind justice. And while blacks for now are the overwhelming victims
of these unjust verdicts and unjustified police murders, the law is written so
that in the future more and more whites will be touched by this kind of thing
as well.
The fact that the principle shooters, Gescard Isnora and
Michael Cooper, were black does not obscure the racist nature of the decision
and the incident. What happened to those young people is still racist because
Isnora and Cooper were performing the dirty work of a racist and classist
system. And a judge unwilling or unable to look past the color and social
status of Mr. Bell and his companions rendered a racist and classist verdict
consistent with the racist and classist law.
So the politicians sought to remind us that while the
verdict may have been unsettling, it was however legal. They sought to quiet
the crowd to remind us that since it was delivered in a court of law and
sanctioned by the system, or the law, it must be just. But we know from history
that that which is legal is not necessarily just.
Blacks were enslaved for over two hundred years in this
country and it was legal, but it wasn't right. Treaties with Indian Nations
were made and then broken with impunity but the treaties were considered the
law. The law dictated that a woman couldn't vote. After slavery officially
ended, vagrancy and peonage laws were enacted which virtually re-enslaved the
newly freed Blacks. If a black person was caught on the street and couldn't
prove he/she was employed and if a white person couldn't vouch for them, they
would be sentenced to a work farm to pay off their resultant fine. Those caught
in this snare worked for free and sometimes to their deaths in inhumane
conditions performing some form of industrial labor enriching the jailors and
the nearby industrialists. Poor whites were caught in this snare as well.
"We know from history that that which is legal is not
necessarily just."
Jim Crow segregation, which separated and discriminated
against blacks and subjugated them politically, economically and socially, was
legal. The highest court in the land, the Supreme Court, in 1896 upheld the
principle, or the lie of "separate but equal" in Plessy vs. Ferguson. And this
stood until it was repudiated by the Supreme Court's Brown vs. The Board of
Education ruling in 1954. That decision along with the efforts of the Civil
Rights movement forced the government and the legal system to tear down legal
discrimination.
Barack Obama should know better than to throw the law and
order line at us because it doesn't fit his experience. He may have had a hard
time getting into this world had his mother met his father in many of these
United States, because 30 states had anti-miscegenation laws, meaning that it
was illegal for blacks and whites to get married or to have sex. These laws
weren't struck down until 1967 when the Supreme Court declared them
unconstitutional in Loving vs. Virginia.
So don't preach to us about the law. We are not fools, this
is not our law. The law was not written on our behalf. It is not a working
class law but an owning class law designed to intimidate and reinforce power
relations.
And it is an exaggeration on the part of the mayor and
the senator to say that this is a nation of laws. This nation breaks
international law whenever it is convenient. Point in case: US President George
Bush and his Attorney General issued directives allowing the CIA to use torture
including waterboarding against those it considered terrorists. The president
signed off on this knowing it is a clear violation of international law. The
present rules governing interrogation allow for a ‘little bit' of torture of
what it calls enemy combatants while holding them indefinitely on Guantanamo
Bay, clearly skirting the rules of the Geneva Convention. This government also
allows the CIA to illegally kidnap and interrogate suspected "enemies of the
State," through what's become known as "renditions." This nation has refused to abide by the rules of the
International Court and has declared that the US is out of its jurisdiction.
And though we may have forgotten, Iraq was invaded against the wishes of the
United Nations.
"The law reminds blacks and browns, the poor and the
immigrant and the undesirable, of their place in this society."
Most of us are outraged that enforcers of the law would fire
50 shots at other human beings, who were unarmed. But a careful reading of the
states, in municipalities all over the country reveals that the law supports
the police. Laws in most States say that if an officer pulls his weapon, he has
to aim for critical mass. In other words shoot to kill. That doesn't make much
sense to us average folks because we figure that common sense and human decency
and respect for human life would dictate that, if we had to stop a car, to
shoot the tires out, or better yet get out of the way. But the law encourages law
enforcement, not to retreat but to shoot to kill us.
We think that the cops are supposed to apprehend suspects
and then let the courts decide. But the law allows the law enforcers on most
occasions to be the "law" - to remind
blacks and browns, the poor and the immigrant and the undesirable, of their
place in this society.
If I am exaggerating why are we still mourning the decision
in the Sean Bell case? Why is it that during any week in some part of this
country some mother mourns the loss of her child at the hands of the law? It is
equally tragic when the child's death is caused by a hoodlum, but it is harder
to understand or accept when it comes at the hands of those who are supposed to
uphold the law.
I disagree with the senator from Illinois; we are not bound
to respect anything that does not respect us. There is nothing about that
verdict that we can respect, neither the person delivering it nor the system
that ratified it, nor the politicians who attempt to justify it.
If we are going to end police misconduct as a scourge on our
lives we are going to have to change the laws that govern their conduct.
Ultimately, government and the law is derived from the consent of the governed.
We ought not to continue to give our consent but to petition, protest, demand
ballot referendums, march or whatever is necessary to change this tyranny,
thinly disguised as law. In the words of St. Augustine, an "unjust law is no
law at all."
Mel Reeves is an activist living in Miami. He
can be contacted at [email protected].