Breaking News: Jury in Michael Slager Show Trial is Deadlocked! (Walter Scott)

 

 

By Nicholas Stix

We don’t know what the numbers are, but I’m sure of at least one juror voting to convict—the foreman, who just so happens to be the only black juror. (That was black Judge Clifton Newman’s decision.)

CNN personality Brooke Baldwin maintained of Walter Scott, “He was pulled over only for a broken tail light,” as if Officer Slager had improperly stopped Scott. This is Baldwin’s way to insinuate that the stop was a bad stop, that Officer Slager was racially profiling Scott, and that the policeman had bad intent, if not premeditation to murder Scott, when he pulled him over.

This is really pathetic. (I’m tempted to say, even by CNN’s low standards, but that would too charitable. With CNN, there is no bottom.) Brooke Baldwin is trying to convict Michael Slager in the court of public opinion, whatever may happen in criminal court.

More poison: Baldwin cited the testimony of a female crime scene investigator, who allegedly claimed that Slager had made contradictory statements about what happened between him and Walter Scott. However, Baldwin (or her scriptwriter) lied by omission, in not mentioning that Judge Newman permitted all police colleagues hostile to the defense to testify about their opinions, while barring almost all testimony by police personnel that might help the defense.

One possible explanation for the deadlock is is that sympathetic white jurors refuse to be party to a judicial lynching. Another possible explanation is that the jury is deadlocked over conflicting or ambiguous interpretations of the distinction between “murder” and “manslaughter.”

Judge Newman has ordered the jury to continue deliberations, until it arrives at a conviction, er, verdict.