Colin,
I testified in an assault and battery case in 2000. The black perp ran over me with a cart while my husband and I were walking in a confined wooden pedestrian tunnel on Van Ness in San Francisco.
He came upon us from behind so I did not know that he was even there until he ran into me with his pull cart. Then he wanted to fight with my husband, to the point that he actually followed us where he had plenty of room to escape once we were all outside of the tunnel. He dragged my husband out into the street into the traffic.
I grabbed his cart and pulled it into the street to distract him because my husband was lying on his back under that thug. The only reason my husband survived with missing teeth and scrapes etc. instead of being killed is that some people working in a camera store saw what was happening and came to restrain the attacker.
The thug continued to scream “It’s a black thing” while he was put in handcuffs by a federal agent (Asian) who had seen the whole thing from across the street. Then three people (all black) came and stood by waiting for the San Francisco police just to make sure that the thug was protected, even though it was my much-older-and smaller husband who was bleeding.
Then the police officer (cowardly white guy) shows up asking whether we were tourists and just generally looking for any excuse to get out of filing the report. The assistant district attorney told us later that that cop would actually make a better witness for the defense. I was surprised but shouldn’t have been. Thank heavens for that federal agent witness and the fact that he wasn’t white or black. Then we got to trial, and some interns there told us what a “real slime ball” the defendant was, based on his record which they were not allowed to tell us about.
We ended up with a hung jury so the thug got away with it. I pretty much knew that that was going to happen by looking at the jury while I was on the witness stand.
Since I was in court reporter’s training at that time, I knew the tactics that the defense attorney was using and did well against him according to the assistant district attorney. Yet I could just look at a couple of the jurors there and tell that they were not interested in the evidence, particularly one black woman who stared straight ahead the entire time and never — I do mean never — even acknowledged that I was speaking about evidence that mattered in this case.
Let’s face it gestures etc. are placed in court records for reason.
