*Malcolm X once famously said about Blacks and racist oppression: “They make the victim the criminal and the criminal the victim.” If any African American aptly fits that characterization, it’s Juror X in the Lindsay Clancy trial, the lone African American juror in the case.
He did the Henry Fonda number in the classic film Twelve Angry Men Like Fonda Juror X doggedly suffered the ridicule and abuse of other jurors by sticking to his guns and being the lone juror to hold out for possible acquittal in an emotionally charged case. Juror X is the perfect clone of Fonda. But in his case the wrath that is falling on his head for his unswerving vote to convict Clancy is about race—his race.
How else to explain this. When in anyone’s memory has a battalion of attorneys, many in the media, and legal analysts publicly splashed that Juror X was an alleged domestic violence abuser. That he was hauled into court on abuse charges. That he allegedly lied to the court about the abuse history by not disclosing that fact. From that dubious allegation they quickly proceed to the not so faint hint that he should be charged with a felony for his failure to disclose the prior legal action against him.
The assault against Juror X took this turn too. His motive and even intelligence are roundly assailed. To the critics, he didn’t understand the high legal bar a prosecution has to scale to convince the jury beyond a reasonable doubt to win a conviction. In the Clancy trial much time, ink, and verbiage have spewed from defense, jurors, and much of the media speculating that the juror didn’t get or understand that legal standard.
The implication is that the prosecution didn’t meet that high bar in proving its case against Clancy. There is almost zero mention that several of the jurors had had no reservation about airing their own pro Clancy bias in expressing sympathy and supposed understanding of her mental health breakdown. To them this is more than ample explanation and justification for her murdering her three children.
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Said one juror, “there was lots of crying, lots of tears. Lots of yelling and then hugging.” Huh? That doesn’t sound like a jury that’s going about its business with impartiality and objectivity and weighing nothing but the facts in the case.
But since the Juror X is supposedly so ill informed about the legal process or a just plain stupid Black man, that is more than sufficient grounds for the verdict of a mistrial to be overturned. Motion after motion will be made, appeal after appeal will be filed to get Juror X booted after the fact from the jury and for Clancy to be acquitted.
The ruthless, naked, and borderline racist pillorying of Juror X also stands in sharp contrast to another racially charged trial three decades earlier. That is the O J Simpson murder trial. The Clancy trial jury except for Juror X was all white. The Simpson jurors were near majority Black.
When they brought back their not guilty verdict of Simpson they were battered from pillar to post by much of the public and the media. The charges flew hot and heavy that they were racially biased against white, emotionally swayed by Simpson’s alleged racist victimization by the LAPD, and that the prosecution did not meet the high bar beyond a reasonable doubt standard.
No matter how much the jurors when interviewed made that point clear, and that was the only reason that they voted to acquit, it didn’t matter. The Black jurors were still called, variously, dumb, ignorant, and Black racists.
There’s only the barest scintilla of that juror flagellation of the eleven white Clancy jurors that voted to acquit. The rage and vilification are almost solely from many quarters reserved for Black Juror X. His identity will be publicly revealed. The moment that happens he will be a marked man. He will be hounded, harassed, picked at, bullied, more dirt on him dug up and media sensationalized and name called for his alleged dumbness and implicit racial tinged bias.
Juror X will catch even holier hell. And again, it will all be about race.
Juror X has been invited to guest on the weekly public affairs show The Hutchinson Report Wednesday 6pm P/9pm E – https://www.facebook.com/earl.o.hutchinson
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is The Garbaging of America” (Amazon ebook and Middle Passage Press)
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