I wrote about Kyle Rittenhouse, Julius Jones, and the criminal justice system.
Last week, the Governor of Oklahoma granted clemency to a man named Julius Jones just hours before he was set to be executed by the state. He has been on death row for over 20 years after being convicted of a 1999 murder he says he was framed for. There are serious questions about Jones’ culpability in the crime he was convicted of, strong evidence that points to his innocence. His sentence was changed from one death sentence to another, his execution stayed on the condition that he never be eligible for parole. Unless his conviction is overturned, his innocence recognized by a court of law, he will die in prison. The death penalty is barbaric for so many reasons, not the least of which is that it creates scenarios where a sentence of life in prison is cause for celebration. 24 hours later, Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted on all charges he faced because he shot three people, killing two of them. There is video of him doing this. This is the reality of the criminal justice system in this country.
Not only will Kyle Rittenhouse face no consequences, his life will be better because of this. He will make money, amass power, be handed opportunities. Meanwhile, Julius Jones will die in prison unless he can get his conviction overturned. Millions of people across this country, mostly Black, struggle to find jobs because they have a criminal record.
I do not know how you come away from this feeling anything but overwhelming sadness. Two people are dead. A child brought an AR-15 to a protest and he killed two people. A teenager faced life in prison, a sentence so inhumane I do not think there is a crime that justifies it. Julius Jones’ family members got invited to his execution because the Governor waited until the final hours to grant clemency. People are dying in prisons across this country. This system is cruel.
People will say that the correct course of action here is to pass harsher self-defense laws, but this is worrisome to me. There are so many women, mostly Black, who are in prison for harming or killing their partners who were abusing them. This is not uncommon. When we make laws stricter they end up disproportionately affecting people of color, not people like Kyle Rittenhouse. I don’t think the answer is to make it easier to convict someone of a crime, or easier to hand down harsher punishments.
The problem here is not that self-defense laws are too permissive. The problem here is our society’s obsession with guns. Say whatever you want about the Second Amendment, but America has a gun problem. There are simply too many guns in this country. More than twice as many guns per capita as the country with the second highest amount. When you combine that with a political party whose message is, very clearly, “violence is okay when it is targeted at your opponents,” what you get is people dead in the street. Our society’s obsession with owning firearms is in direct conflict with our self-defense laws. Everyone has the right to defend themselves from harm, and everyone has the right to own and carry a weapon of war. What did we think would happen when we allowed civilians to open carry weapons of mass murder? There are just too many guns in this country. Things will only get worse until we reckon with this.
The lionization of Kyle Rittenhouse is so frightening. It is one thing to acknowledge that the law was on his side (it is, that is true). It is another thing completely to hold this person up as a hero, to interview him on cable news, to offer him congressional internships. What is legal and what is moral are not the same. The right-wing political movement consistently champions violence against their political opponents, and people are dying because of this. “What Kyle Rittenhouse did was okay because he killed the right people” is an actual argument people are making. They point to the fact that the people he killed had prior criminal histories, as if having been convicted of a crime means you are a perfectly fine person to murder at any time. This all happened at a protest against police violence, which Rittenhouse’s defenders describe as violent mobs of people looting and rioting. Murder is an appropriate response to property damage, but property damage is not an appropriate response to murder, I guess.
I am begging us all to take a step back here and think about what we are actually talking about. We are arguing about what kinds of murder are okay, about which types of people it is okay to kill and who is allowed to do the killing. Is it the state? Is it white men? Is it a teenager? This is where we are, finding ways to justify the taking of a life. This is what the system asks of us. It makes all of us worse.
The criminal justice system in this country does not do what we have all been told it is supposed to do. It does not keep us safe, it rarely provides opportunities for rehabilitation, it does not deliver justice. It is not fair, it is not equitable, it is not moral. It is a brutal, inhumane, expensive machine that works to uphold systems of power and oppress those who are not at the top of them. The same system that almost killed Julius Jones let Kyle Rittenhouse walk away, free from any punishment. That is not an anomaly, that is not a mistake, that is the system doing exactly what it was designed to do.
I believe that people are more than the worst thing they have ever done. Most people who have done something bad, if given the chance, would acknowledge the harm they have caused. The criminal justice system does not give people the chance to do this. It incentivizes everyone, at every turn, to deny their actions, to justify their behavior, to say “I had no choice.” Kyle Rittenhouse killed two people. Instead of creating a space for him to face that fact, a space for the victims and their families to be heard, his criminal trial created a space for his actions to be justified, to be heralded as necessary, as if he had no other option. There is no forgiveness, no acceptance, no contrition in this process. Why would anyone apologize if the only way they can stay out of prison is by arguing that their actions were necessary? Why would anyone concede an ounce of responsibility when doing so would likely result in them spending years in a cage? I want a system that addresses the causes of harm before any harm happens, not one where the only option is for more harm to be done in the aftermath.
As I write this we are all waiting for a verdict in the trial for the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, but it’s hard for me to even know what we are waiting for. We will not ever find comfort or safety or justice in the legal system. It is not built to give us these things. There is no mercy or peace or humanity to be found in a courtroom. We have all been sold the lie that these are the things the system can do, that the current set of rules is the only way we can protect ourselves. Do you feel safer? Do you feel justice has been served? Do you feel proud of us? I do not.
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