Judge Timothy Walmsley presides over the jury selection process in the trial of Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael, and their neighbor, William "Roddie" Bryan, charged with the February 2020 death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, at the Gwynn County Superior Court, in Brunswick, Ga., Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2021.Β
Octavio Jones/Pool Photo via AP
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) β A judge ruled Wednesday that he'll seat one Black juror and 11 whites to decide the trial of the men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery, despite prosecutors' objections that several Black potential jurors were cut because of their race.
Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley acknowledged that "intentional discrimination" by attorneys for the three white defendants charged in the death of the Black man appeared to have shaped jury selection. But he said Georgia law limited his authority to intervene.
Race is a central issue in the case involving the death of Arbery. Greg McMichael and his adult son, Travis McMichael, armed themselves and pursued Arbery in a pickup truck on Feb. 23, 2020, after they spotted the 25-year-old man running in their neighborhood in coastal Georgia. A neighbor, William "Roddie" Bryan," joined the chase in his own truck and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery three times with a shotgun.
FILE - This combination of booking photos provided by the Glynn County, Ga., Detention Center, shows, from left, Travis McMichael, his father, Gregory McMichael, and William "Roddie" Bryan Jr.Β
Glynn County Detention Center via AP, File
A long, sometimes heated debate over the racial makeup of the final jury erupted in court Wednesday afternoon as lawyers wrapped up a jury selection process lasting more than two weeks.
Arbery's death became part of the broader reckoning on racial injustice in the criminal legal system after a string of fatal encounters between Black people and police β George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks, among others.
No one was charged in Arbery's death until more than two months afterward, when the video of the shooting leaked online. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police and soon arrested all three men on charges of murder and other crimes.
Minutes after the attorneys had finished narrowing a panel of 48 to a final jury of 12 on Wednesday, prosecutor Linda Dunikoski noted only a single Black juror made the panel.
She argued that defense lawyers had struck eight Black potential jurors because of their race. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that it is unconstitutional for attorneys during jury selection to strike potential jurors solely based on race or ethnicity.
Laura Hogue, an attorney for Greg McMichael, insisted those jury panelists were cut for other reasons β namely for expressing strong opinions about the case when questioned individually by attorneys.
"I can give you a race-neutral reason for any one of these," Hogue said.
She noted one such juror had written on her juror questionnaire that Arbery was shot "due to his color" and had told attorneys she felt the defendants were guilty.
Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley denied prosecutors' request to reinstate those eight Black potential jurors, though he said: "This court has found there appears to be intentional discrimination in the panel."
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The judge said his ability to change the jury's racial makeup was limited because defense attorneys were able to give nonracial reasons for their decisions to strike the potential Black jurors.
"They have been able to explain to the court why besides race those individuals were struck from the panel," Walmsley said.
The judge said the jury, along with four alternates, will be seated and sworn in Friday, when opening statements in the trial are expected. He did not give the races of the alternate jurors.
Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, told reporters outside the courthouse she found it "devastating" that only one Black juror will be seated. Still, she said of the final jury: "I'm very confident that they'll make the right decision after seeing all the evidence."
Her attorney, S. Lee Merritt, said he still believes the trial will end in a conviction, though defense lawyers had "created a jury that was more favorable for their defendants, an almost entirely white jury."
Dunikoski noted that many prospective jurors questioned in open court expressed strong opinions about the case, but all who remained in the pool from which the 12 jurors emerged said they could be impartial and base a verdict solely on the trial evidence.
In Glynn County, where Arbery was killed and the trial is being held, Black people account for nearly 27% of the population of 85,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The judge said 25% of the pool from which the final jury was chosen was Black.
Defense attorneys say the McMichaels and Bryan committed no crimes. They say Arbery had been recorded by security cameras inside a nearby house and they suspected him of stealing. Greg McMichael told police his son opened fire in self-defense after Arbery attacked with his fists and grappled for Travis McMichael's shotgun.
Investigators have said Arbery was unarmed and there's no evidence he had stolen anything.
The slaying dominated news coverage and social media feeds in Glynn County, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of Savannah. That caused court officials to take extraordinary steps in hopes of seating an impartial jury.
They mailed 1,000 jury duty notices, and nearly 200 people were questioned by the judge and attorneys at the courthouse during jury selection.
***
History of the US justice system
History of the US justice system
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
There are nearly 700,000 law enforcement officers working in the United States. Their efforts have put 2.3 million people in Americaβs 3,134 local jails, 1,833 state prisons, 1,772 juvenile correction facilities, 110 federal prisons, and 218 immigrant detention facilities. Although the United States has less than 5% of the worldβs population, nearly one in four people incarcerated in the entire world are languishing in American prisons.
Most federal law enforcement is organized under two massive and sprawling agencies. The Department of Justice includes the FBI, DEA, ATF, U.S. Marshal Service, Bureau of Prisons, and the Office of the Inspector General. The Department of Homeland Security oversees the Secret Service, Coast Guard, TSA, ICE, and Customs and Border Protection. Thatβs on top of the 18,000 local and state police departments that enforce the laws in Americaβs neighborhoods and on its streets and highways.
Todayβs criminal justice system would be unrecognizable to early Americans, who lived in a world where law enforcement and the courts were informal and highly localized operations. In many cases, βjusticeβ was dished out by townspeople who could be deputized with police powers by a lone sheriff or constable. Sometimes, justice was a violent and highly personal affairβeven the aristocracy settled scores with formal pistol duels that were sanctioned by policy or custom.
Today, few topics are more heated and controversial than that of criminal justice. The American justice system provides due process and protections that are unheard of in much of the world. However, there are nowβand have always beenβgaping disparities in how those protections are applied based on factors like race and income. The legacy of decisions made by men in white wigs in the 18th century triggered civil unrest across the country in 2020.
Using a variety of historical and news sources, as well as government reports and data from advocacy groups, Stacker identified 50 critical moments in the history of the American justice system. The following is a condensed account of nearly 400 years of Americaβs attempts to protect its citizens, punish its criminals, and maintain social order through the enforcement of laws.
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1636: Night watches patrol Boston
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
Boston was the first American city to organize community-based patrols known as night watches . New York and Philadelphia followed suit in 1658 and 1700. Sometimes backed up by professional constables, a group of volunteers walked and rode horses around town, looked for suspicious or unfamiliar people, and warned citizens of danger.
Print Collector // Getty Images
17th and 18th centuries: Colonies establish a patchwork of laws
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
Before the Revolution, there was no unified American justice system . Each colony had its own laws, codes, punishments, procedures, and court systems. The Founding Fathers used the drafting of the Constitution as an opportunity to provide uniform laws and rights.
Constitutional Convention // Wikimedia Commons
18th century: Prison becomes a punishment
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
Prior to the 18th century, virtually all criminal sentences involved either fines, execution, or gruesome tortures like flogging, branding, and cutting off noses and ears. Primitive jails were built, but only to hold suspects awaiting trial or sentenceβincarceration was not a punishment in and of itself. As an increasingly sensitive public grew weary of gory corporal punishments and frequent executions, prison time began to emerge as an alternative approach.
Miller, Francis Trevelyan // Wikimedia Commons
1704: Slave patrols create a blueprint for the future
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
The first slave patrols were organized in South Carolina in 1704 and became an integral part of antebellum Southern society. Organized groups patrolled forests and roads looking for runaways, illegal gatherings, and contrabandβbut their primary purpose was to instill terror and deter slave revolts. After the Civil War, police departments and sheriffsβ offices across the South were modeled on slave patrols, and their ranks were frequently populated with former slave patrollers.
Mondadori Portfolio // Getty Images
1791: Bill of Rights defines American liberty
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
The protections American citizens can expect in the criminal justice system were put into writing in 1791 with the adoption of the Bill of Rights . The first 10 amendments to the Constitution guarantee specific rights and freedoms for the individual and set the rules for due process in the application of the law. They also, however, leave a lot open to interpretation with strikingly subjective language, particularly the Eighth Amendment, which forbids the state from imposing βexcessive bail,β βexcessive fines,β and βcruel and unusual punishment.β
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Joe Sohm/Visions of America // Getty Images
1820s: Wardens experiment with rehabilitation
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
In the 1820s, wardens at Auburn Prison in New York and Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania began experimenting with techniques to reform prisoners instead of merely punishing them. The experiments included complete silence and near-total isolation with no contact with the outside world and virtually no communication with guards or other inmates. The other two ingredients were hard work under the threat of corporal punishment and intense study of the Bible during long hours of silence and solitude.
Historic American Buildings Survey // Wikimedia Commons
1838: Boston PD is born
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
In 1838, Boston created Americaβs first full-time professional police department . New York City, Chicago, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Baltimore soon followed, and by the 1880s, every major city had a municipal police force.
Bettmann // Getty Images
1857: NYPD compiles its βRoguesβ Galleryβ
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
In 1857, the fledgling NYPD adopted a new technique that would change law enforcement forever. Police began photographing the cityβs very worst known criminals and compiling their pictures in a special book to help victims identify potential suspects. The book was called the βRoguesβΒ Gallery.β
Federal Bureau of Investigation // Wikimedia Commons
1865: 13th amendment makes slaves out of criminals
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
The 13th Amendment outlawed slavery βexcept as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.β It was a glaring loophole that directly tied a personβs most basic rights to their status in the criminal justice system. Through peonage, convict leasing, chain gangs, and prison plantations, Southern states would soon use the 13th Amendment to criminalize former enslaved peopleΒ back into slavery .
Detroit Publishing Co. // Wikimedia Commons
1865: βBlack Codesβ make convicts easy to come by
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
After the Civil War, shell-shocked SouthernΒ whitesΒ introduced βBlack Codesβ to legally subjugate the millions of former slaves now roaming free, voting, going to school, and even running for office. The restrictive lawsβapplying only to African Americansβcriminalized virtually every aspect of Black life and ensured that nearly every African American was in perpetual violation of the law. Any who were deemed troublesome, rebellious, dangerous, lazy, or even discourteous could be arrested for Black Code violationsβmost commonly vagrancyβand returned to slavery through the convict-leasing system.
John L. Spivak // Wikimedia Commons
1865: A cruel but profitable system emerges
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
From the Civil War through World War II, law enforcement in Southern states arrested and convicted tens of thousands of African Americans who had committed no real crime and leased them to farming and industrial operations as slave labor. Virtually any Black person who wasnβt working for a white man could be charged with vagrancy, convicted in corrupt local courts, levied unpayable fines, and then forced to perform hard labor until the fine was paid off by the companies that leased themβor they died. They toiled in terrible conditions in mines and on farms, and since they came cheap and were easy to replace, their lives and bodies were much less valuable than even those of their enslaved ancestors.
MPI // Getty Images
1865-1890: The Wild West earns its rep
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
After the Civil War, a new breed of cops and criminals became legends in rugged and violent outpost towns that sprung up around railroad stops in the American West . Famed outlaws like Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy, and Jesse James tried to stay a step ahead of iconic lawmen like Wyatt Earp and Seth Bullock in towns like Tombstone, Arizona, Deadwood, North Dakota, and Abilene, Texas.
Anonymous // Wikimedia Commons
1874: Pinkerton introduces the βWantedβ poster
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
Few symbols are more synonymous with the Wild West than the βWantedβ posters that law enforcement used to seek the publicβs help in catching criminals. Allan Pinkerton, founder of the famed Pinkerton Detective Agency, used such a poster for the first time in a kidnapping case in 1874. They would spring up all over the country, often advertising monetary bounties andβfor the very worst outlawsβthe qualifying statement of βdead or alive.β
Bettmann // Getty Images
1880s: The mugshot era begins
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
In the 1880s, famous and controversial NYPD Chief Detective Thomas F. Byrnes expanded the RoguesβΒ Gallery concept as part of his pioneering innovations in police work. Instead of just photographing the very worst known criminals, he ordered his officers to take front and side-profile pictures of everyone they arrested. It was the first use of universal booking photos, which would make up the first law enforcement database.
Library of Congress // Getty Images
1890: The ultimate sentence goes electric
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
On Aug. 6, 1890, a convict named William Kemmler was executed in New York in the worldβs first use of the electric chair. Although the terrifying new device looked like something out of the Inquisition, its proponents promised it would be a quick, painless, and humane alternative to old-world executions. It was not, and Kemmler writhed in agony for several minutes as his body burned from the inside out as horrified spectators watched.
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Public Domain // Wikimedia Commons
1890s: Convict leasing changes to chain gangs
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
Once the public learned of the brutal violence and rampant corruption that defined the convict-leasing system, Southern governments were pressured to regain control of the convicts they had been renting out. They achieved this by organizing them into chain gangs of slave laborers who did the backbreaking work of improving the Southβs dilapidated infrastructure. Vagrancy and other Black Code violations kept the chain gangs full, and conditions were often as terrible as they were in the convict-leasing system.
unattributed // Wikimedia Commons
1901: The prison plantation model rises
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
At the turn of the 20th century, prison farms like the infamous Parchman Penitentiary in Mississippi began springing up across the South as an alternative to convict leasing and chain gangs. Malnourished, exhausted, and terrified convicts picked cotton and plowed fields under the threat of the whip, often on the exact same plantations where their ancestors toiled as enslaved peopleβand the conditions werenβt much different. To save money on guards, wardens bribed the most violent and feared prisoners, or βtrustees,β to control inmates, many of whom died from heat exhaustion, disease, malnutrition, gunshots, beatings, medical neglect, and shackle poisoning.
Mississippi Department of Archives and History // Wikimedia Commons
1910: Fingerprints bring a conviction
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
In 1910, a Chicago man named Thomas Jennings was convicted of murdering a man in his home. Fingerprints Jennings left behind on a freshly painted railing were used to help convict him at trial. It is the first known conviction based on fingerprint evidence in the American justice system.
FBI // Wikimedia Commons
1920: Prohibition fuels super-criminals
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
In 1920, the 18th Amendment banned the production, sale, importation, and consumption of alcohol in the United States. Much like the war on drugs that would follow, Prohibition gave rise to a far deadlier and more organized breed of criminals and put law enforcement on steroids. Consumption never waned, and when Prohibition was repealed 13 years later, alcoholism was still there.
MOHAI, PEMCO // Wikimedia Commons
1920s: Prohibition gangsters reign
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
Al Capone was the most famous gangster of the Prohibition era , but he was hardly the only one. The cartel kingpins of their time, gangsters like Capone accumulated enormous wealth and power through the illegal alcohol trade. They enforced their will and defended their turf with a level of violence that would have been excessive even by the standards of the Wild West outlaws who came before.
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FBI // Wikimedia Commons
1924: The gangsters have Hoover to deal with
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
The FBI was formed in 1908 to unify law enforcement at the federal level in what had become a sprawling, continental country. The agency came into its own in 1924 when J. Edgar Hoover was appointed as its head. He would reignβarguably as the most powerful man in Americaβfor nearly a half-century until 1972 and go down as the most controversial and effective lawman in history.
Unknown author // Wikimedia Commons
1930s: The Public Enemies wreak havoc
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
During the Depression, a brazen and deadly new brand of criminals emerged, one very different from organized crime syndicates like those headed by Al Capone. Freelance gangsters like Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, βMachine Gunβ Kelly, and βBaby Faceβ Nelson went on cross-country crime sprees, robbing banks, taking hostages, and killing police and civilians alike. Using Thompson submachine guns, Browning Automatic Rifles, bulletproof vests, and fast, powerful, V-8 cars, they surprised and overwhelmed local law enforcement everywhere before zooming off to the next jurisdiction.
Unknown // Wikimedia Commons
1951: βDragnetβ launches a genreβand an image
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
Every cop show on television traces its roots to βDragnet,β which began as a radio program in the 1940s before moving to television in 1951. It spawned the police procedural genre, one of the most successful and enduring in television history. The courteous, level-headed, and diligent Joe Fridayβs pursuit of βjust the factsβ also provided excellent PR for the Los Angeles Police Department and law enforcement in general.
Michael Ochs Archives // Getty Images
1960: A decades-long crime wave begins
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
1960 signaled the start of an unprecedented increase in crime that would continue for decades before peaking in the 1990s. The rise of drugs, crime, gangs, and violence terrified the nation and resulted in harsh policies that would militarize law enforcement and fill Americaβs prisons. Between 1960-1970, crime rates soared by 126% before rising by another 64% between 1970-1980.
Bettmann // Getty Images
1965: The βwar on crimeβ begins
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
In March 1965, President Lyndon Johnson declared a βwar on crimeβ and presented Congress with legislation that would forever change the nature of the American justice system. The Law Enforcement Assistance Act established a federal role in local law enforcement, including police, prisons, and the courts. Among other things, it created a channel that continues to transfer military weapons and equipment from the defense sector to local law enforcement to this day.
Arnold Newman // Wikimedia Commons
1966: The Miranda case spawns a familiar phrase
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
Everyone who has ever seen βLaw and Orderβ knows that cops have to read suspects their Miranda rights at the time of their arrests. In 1966, the Supreme Court threw out the rape and kidnapping convictions of a man named Ernesto Miranda. The police violated Mirandaβs rights, the Court concluded, by interrogating him until he confessed without informing him of his rights to remain silent and to have an attorney present during questioning.
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1970: Law enforcement gets a new weapon
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
In 1970, the federal Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute gave law enforcement a powerful new weapon in fighting organized crime. It was always hard to lock up crime bosses who rarely did any dirt themselves, but RICO allowed law enforcement to charge people just for being part of an ongoing criminal enterprise. It gained fame when then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani used it to convict John Gotti, the last true don of the New York City mafia, in 1992.
Bettmann // Getty Images
1971: Plantations prisons are reformed
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
In 1971, Mississippiβs infamous Parchman Farm Penitentiary was the last remnant of old-world slavery in the United States. Underfed, tormented, mostly Black prisoners toiled for 15-hour days under the threat of the lash and violent βtrusteeβ inmates who had total power over their lives and bodies. Finally, that year a court ruled that Parchmanβs system of penal slavery and the tortures used to maintain it were cruel and unusual punishmentβeven if they didnβt violate the 13th Amendment.
WhisperToMe // Wikimedia Commons
1971: The war on drugs
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
In June 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a βwar on drugsβ and referred to drug use as βpublic enemy number one.β In the ensuing half-century, the unwinnable war has cost $1 trillion, filled Americaβs prisons, dispensed harsh sentences for non-violent drug-related offenses,Β and given rise to cartels in Latin America that put Al Caponeβs crime syndicate to shame.
Office of Senator Robert Byrd // Wikimedia Commons
1972: The whipping post is retired
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
The last flogging sentence ever handed down by a court in the United States was carried out in Delawareβs New Castle County Workhouse on June 16, 1952. Like countless others before him all over the country, the prisoner was tied to a wooden post and whipped by a prison warden with 20 heavy lashes on his bare back. In 1972, Delaware became the last state in the U.S. to outlaw the once-familiar whipping post.
Topical Press Agency // Getty Images
1972: FBI mindhunters track serial killers
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
The 1960s-1980s saw a disturbing increase in cases that involved two or more victims killed by the same person in separate incidents that followed a pattern. Serial killers captured the publicβs imagination and gave rise to a new kind of police work that involved psychology and science as much as stakeouts and handcuffs. In 1972, the FBI launched its Behavioral Science Unit to profile, track, identify, and arrest serial killers.
JOYCE NALTCHAYAN // Getty Images
1972: Death penalty halted
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty constituted cruel and unusual punishment. It was a complicated and narrow ruling, however, and applied only to a few specific cases. Although it temporarily voided 40 death penalty statutes, it was not a precedent-setting ruling and would soon be overturned.
UpstateNYer // Wikimedia Commons
1976: Death penalty returns with a bang
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
The Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty with Gregg v. Georgia in 1976, just four years after it ordered a moratorium. The following year, convicted murderer Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in Utah.
Bettmann // Getty Images
1977: Lethal injection makes a queasy public feel better
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
Constitutionally speaking, it was neither cruel nor unusual to shoot, hang, electrocute, or gas convicted criminals to death, but the gory nature of executions led to calls for something more humane. In 1977βthe same year Gary Gilmore was tied to a chair and shot to death by local police officers behind an abandoned prison canneryβOklahoma became the first jurisdiction in the world to approve execution by lethal injection. In 1982, Charles Brooks was the first convict to die that way.
CACorrections // Wikimedia Commons
1979: Mayhem in Miami launches an era
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
On July 11, 1979, gangsters from Columbian cocaine cartels engaged in a brazen daylight shootout at a mall in Miami, which had become the cocaine import capital of America. The so-called βCocaine Cowboysβ incident made it clear that a new and ruthless breed of criminals without borders was at work in the United States. Local police were unprepared and outgunned, and a supersized federal law enforcement response soon descended on South Florida and its overseas cocaine suppliers.
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Bettmann // Getty Images
1984: Prison sentences get longer
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
The 1984 Comprehensive Crime Control Act eliminated parole in the federal system and established mandatory minimum-sentencing guidelines. Harsh sentences with no consideration of mitigating factors escalated the already stark rise in Americaβs prison population that began in the 1970s. Incarceration rates soared from 100 per 100,000 residents in the middle of the 20th century to 760 per 100,000 at its peak in 2008.
Tanankyo // Wikimedia Commons
Late 1980s: DNA revolutionizes criminal investigation
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
The emergence of DNA forensics gave investigators on both sides of the criminal justice system a powerful new tool. DNA evidence has helped secure countless criminal convictions and also helps organizations like the Innocence Project secure the release of the many people who are wrongly convicted.
Canva
Late 1980s: Crack laws deliver inconsistent justice
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
By the late 1980s, the drug war had swelled Americaβs prison population to unprecedented levelsβa cartoonishly disproportionate number of inmates were Black or Latino, and virtually all of them were poor. In response to the crack epidemic, new legislation mandated long, harsh prison sentences for even simple possession of crack, even if there was no intent to distribute. Penalties for the powder cocaine that white suburban users tended to prefer were not enhanced.
Canva
1991: A police beating sets a city on fire
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
In 1991, a group of white Los Angeles police officers were videotaped brutally beating motorist and criminal suspect Rodney King in footage that quickly spread around the country and the world. For many poor minorities in L.A., the images were nothing newβbut now that mainstream America could see it with their own eyes, change for the better seemed within reach. Their acquittal the following year triggered nationwide outrage and an explosion of long-simmering anger that sparked the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.
Mick Taylor // Wikimedia Commons
1992: Ruby Ridge galvanizes militia movement
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
In 1992, federal law enforcement officers engaged in an 11-day siege at the remote Idaho home of a wanted man named Randy Weaver in an incident known as Ruby Ridge . Several people were killed in the standoff, including a U.S. Marshal and Weaverβs wife and young son. The incident inspired radical, violent, and often heavily armed anti-government militants to unify in what would become the American militia movement.
PAMELA PRICE // Getty Images
1993: Waco burns
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
Less than a year after Ruby Ridge, federal law enforcement once again found itself in a tense standoff with heavily armed radicals who didnβt recognize the authority of the federal government. The siege at David Koreshβs Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, started with a deadly gunfight and ended with a fire that killed dozens of Branch Davidians, including children and pregnant women.
FBI // Wikimedia Commons
1994: A baseball analogy delivers life sentences
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
So-called βthree strikesβ laws were yet another heavy-handed response to soaring crime rates with designs to keep career criminals off the streets. Many low-level offenders, however, received life sentences for relatively minor crimes because theyβd had previous trips through the system. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 extended the three-strikes policy to the federal system.
Aaron Bauer // Wikimedia Commons
1995: Terrorism gets a new look
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
On April 19, 1995, a baby-faced white military veteran named Timothy McVeigh planted a truck bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The blast destroyed the building and killed 168 people, including 19 children, in the worst domestic terrorist attack to that point in American history. Citing Ruby Ridge and Waco as his inspiration, McVeigh represented a new brand of white, homegrown, anti-government terrorism that continues to grow to this day.
FEMA // Wikimedia Images
1996: Delaware stages the last old-fashioned execution
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
On Jan. 25, 1996, Delaware added another gory record to criminal justice history. That day, a convicted murderer named Billy Bailey had his sentence of being βhanged by the neck until deadβ carried out in front of an audience. It was the last execution by hanging in American history.
Canva
2001: Due process is forfeited
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
Civil asset forfeiture is the antithesis of the most basic protection of the American justice system: due process. The system allows law enforcement to seize money, cars, jewelry, and other property on the mere suspicion that it was gained through criminality without probable cause or a warrant. The systemβwhich moves the burden of proof from the state to the accusedβnetted law enforcement $29 billion between 2000-2014 alone.
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C.J. GUNTHER // Getty Images
2001: Death of police and civilians on September 11th
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
Thousands of civilians andΒ 72 police officers were killed in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and 71 of them died inside the World Trade Center. It was the deadliest day in the history of American law enforcement.
NormanB // Wikimedia Commons
2002: Mentally disabled convicts are spared the death penalty
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that it was unconstitutional to execute people with intellectual disabilities on the grounds that it constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The states, however, were left to determine who exactly qualified as intellectually disabled.
Matt H. Wade // Wikimedia Commons
2014: Smartphones get 4th Amendment protection
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
In the 2014 Riley v. California case, the Supreme Court ruled that warrantless searches of digital devices like smartphones during arrests were unconstitutional. Since todayβs devices now contain personal and private information like the kind specifically mentioned in the Fourth Amendment, scrolling through a suspectβs phone was not the same as searching his pockets or car.
Pixabay
2018: The bail-reform movement takes off
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
Many cities are now experimenting with alternatives to a bail system that keeps poor people in jail while awaiting trial but allows the more affluent to go free until their court dates arrive. About 500,000 people are currently awaiting trial in jailβmost for low-level offensesβsimply because they canβt afford bail. All of them are presumed innocent.
Bobak Ha'Eri // Wikimedia Commons
2020: The 13th Amendmentβs legacy lingers
Updated
Sep 1, 2021
Reforms have put an end to convict leasing, chain gangs, and slave plantations dressed up as prisons, but the legacy of the 13th Amendment is alive and well. Most prisons still rely on inmate labor to function andβas authorized by the 13th Amendmentβwork is usually compulsory. Inmate labor is now coerced mostly through the threat of lost privileges instead of the whip, but prison workers still have virtually no rights or protections and, as of 2017, earned between 86 cents and $3.45 per day.
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