“When you have a system that is just a failure, which the criminal justice system has been for cases of this sort for forever really, it generates enormous cynicism and distrust and disengagement from the institutions that make up our society,” she said. Herein lies the historic nature of the verdict in Chauvin’s trial-and the history of violence and injustice to which it is the exception, Burnham said. All four officers were charged with assault, and in 1992, all of them were acquitted. “Even though this was all very clear and obvious, we’ve had cases where it was clear and obvious and the result still wasn’t what people had hoped for, going back to Rodney King ,” a Black man who was beaten by four Los Angeles police officers in 1991, an event also caught on video by a witness. ![]() O’Bryant African American Institute at Northeastern. Photos by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern UniversityĪn overwhelming amount of testimony was presented by 45 witnesses during the course of the 15-day trial, and still people waited anxiously for the verdict on Tuesday-a testament to the lopsidedness of the justice system for Black and brown people who’ve been victims of police violence, said Richard O’Bryant, director of the John D. James Hackney is dean of the Northeastern University School of Law and a scholar of critical race theory. Left to right: Margaret Burnham, university distinguished professor of law and director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project. “This was an unusual and rare case, and one has to ask whether it takes all of that in order to get to the right result, and if yes, then that alone is an indictment of a criminal justice system that we need to be able to depend upon,” said Burnham, who also founded and leads the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern. The event was filmed by a bystander, and the video ricocheted across social media platforms, stirring outrage over the clear falsehood in the way police reported the incident at the time. ![]() ![]() Floyd, a Black man, was unarmed when Chauvin, a white man, killed him. Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who knelt on George Floyd’s neck until he died, was found guilty of all three counts related to Floyd’s murder on Tuesday, in a case that “bucks up against 200 years of history in a way that is enormously refreshing but also deeply informative,” said Margaret Burnham, university distinguished professor of law at Northeastern.įloyd’s death nearly a year ago touched off protests around the world against police violence and racial injustice.
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