There are many things we might learn from Mick Jagger, but this is the most important for me: “Every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints.” If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will recognize that that insight is a heretofore unspoken theme of much of what I write. Given the conviction this week of Derrick Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, the Stones’ anthem is especially persistent in haunting my mental soundtrack.
I never doubted for a moment that Chauvin was guilty; most of America was with me on that. Many people have noted the moderate miracle of obtaining a conviction against him on all counts; again, my logic tells me that such an outcome had to be inevitable, though my instinct was always dubious of such a result. I’m still wary of the sentence he might receive — I suspect it will be lighter than a “normal” convict’s — but my anticipation will only be satisfied by time on that score. I certainly have no confidence that this is a moment that will change police practices towards the Black community going forward. There is too much about this moment, and the ways in which people are discussing it, that makes it feel exceptional rather the transformative.
If I have a struggle with the outcome of the case, it’s not over questions of guilt or innocence. Nor does it have to do with whether a new age of public safety is at hand. Rather, I’m grappling with my own feelings of sympathy for Chauvin. When I watched him on the video, I saw a cold-blooded killer who felt entitled to inflict fatal damage on George Floyd, but enduring mental and emotional stress on every member of the community gathered around as witnesses. Watching Chauvin, I sensed a cascade of immoral power power streaming from him, sanctioned by the state and born of all kinds of fears that form the foundation of his soul. I have seen the same posture and vision in many police and correctional officers. I know it’s a habit that’s only a thin blue line away from being practiced on any of us and no line away at all from being perpetrated against culturally marginalized people. My reaction to it is rage and deep sadness. It is recognition combined with desperation. It is familiarity and resignation. In every part of the criminal justice system, we have no right to be surprised by such behaviors and attitudes. To stand is shock in the face of such brutality is only to claim for ourselves a faux innocence engendered by willful ignorance, and that is the fuel that allows the criminal injustice system to carry on with praise and impunity.
Despite all that, my ambivalence rose up and exacted a toll on me when I watched Chauvin in the courtroom hearing his sentence. If you know me, you know that I believe that pretty much everything in life is so complex that it merits uncertainty. It would be so much easier for me to see things with binary clarity, but I’m not blessed with such misprision. As for the Minneapolis courtroom this week, if you haven’t sat in the defendant’s seat in a criminal court, it’s almost impossible to imagine that moment. If you consume criminal verdicts via the media, you are likely familiar with some variation of this phrase: “The defendant showed no emotion as the verdict was handed down.” Let me assure you, however, this is not a psychopathic lack of affect (Though you might be interested to note that legal-psychological screenings always try to detect this in the convicted — some presumption, eh?). No amount of carrying on is going to match what the person in the defendant’s seat feels at that moment which is basically this: utter freefall. It’s the moment when you know you have left the flying plane without a parachute. You just don’t know how high you are or what it’s going to feel like when you hit the ground. No sense in screaming about it because it’s already over. Friends, family, lawyers, even injustice system officials will try to comfort you by saying that they are going to get you a parachute before you splat, and you humor them with a nod, and maybe even take actions to aid with their rescue plans, but you don’t believe that salvation is possible. Really the only thing you feel is that freefall, and you also recognize that somewhere people are cheering your descent. Some root for it ghoulishly; others because it might have a direct impact on them; others still because you are a now a symbol that helps them identify with the Innocents. The defendant doesn’t necessarily process all this analytically at the moment of verdict, but it’s all there, and it’s definitely overwhelming.
And so having sat in that chair where Chauvin sat, I really did feel a rather deep and frightening sympathy. No matter how much I despise what he did or the institutions on whose name he did it, I couldn’t help but look into his eyes peering out from above that COVID mask and physically experience significant discomfort in my own body. In the binary land of Criminals and Innocents, what does that make me? After a while, my analytical brain kicked in and I found some sort of refuge in irony. How twisted is it that Chauvin now moves from one part of a system that is horribly broken, policing, to another irredeemably damaged segment of the system, prison? Alas, this is just an instance where logic confirms emotion, no matter that the people at The Change Companies try to claim otherwise. What, ultimately, do I do with my sympathy for the Devil?