Glitch asked in the Absurd Defenses thread for a description of the “group deviance” episode of The Practice which aired Sunday Jan 16. This is a hairy one, so I figured I’d start a new thread and see if I can gather some opinions.
Legal interest here, but no formal legal training, so caveat emptor. This is my short synopsis of the plot line, as I remember it.
A respected black businessman was arrested for his participation in a riot that took place at a retail drugstore when another black customer was falsely accused of shoplifting. All of the following events were captured on security surveillance cameras. The accused shoplifter resisted and the defendant joined in the struggle with the security guard. Other customers began removing merchandise from the store amid the chaos. The defendant was fighting with a security guard and ended up throwing him through a window. The guard was seriously injured and hospitalized. The defendant was charged with aggravated assault.
The initial defense strategy was that the defendant’s actions were justified by self-defense. They proceed with this theory until two events make it necessary to change focus.
First, the guard dies in the hospital, and the charges are upgraded in mid-trial to manslaughter. Second, the first police officer arriving on the scene (also a black man) testifies that the defendant said to him, immediately after throwing the guard through the window, something to this effect: “So, brother, are you going to stand there? Or are you going to help us tear this place down?” The officer arrested the defendant.
After adjournment, a new theory is advanced by a defense team member, with precedent [according to the character] in the Reginald Denny assault case. The argument is called something like “Contagious Deviance in a Group Setting”. Theory being that the African-American male is unable to control impulses towards deviance in a setting in which deviance is going on around him. They are that specific. The expert hired states repeatedly that this condition applies almost exclusively to African-American men. At one point the defendan’t wife refers to this caustically as the “wild monkey” defense.
After much soul-searching, the theory is applied in court. The first chair defense attorney, also a black man, is troubled by this defense, but goes along. The expert takes that stand and gives his testimony that his studies have proven this condition in black men and in black men only. On cross, the prosecutor gets him to admit his short time with the defendant (less than an hour) and his fee ($10,000), and attempts to impeach his credibility. The defendant takes the stand and is treated as hostile by the second chair defense attorney. The attorney brings into the record a previous assault case in which the defendant participated in a group beating. He is able to provoke several hostile-sounding outbursts from the defendant, including an admission that “things happened so fast” and he “didn’t really think”. [I don’t believe the prosecutor’s cross of the defendant was shown.]
Closing arguments are delivered. The prosecutor, a black woman, states that she is sick and ashamed that the defense theory in question was even argued. She calls for accountability and justice. The first chair defense attorney’s closing is interesting. He calls the “group deviance” theory “crap”. Several times. He advances a new theory, that in fact the defendant was “fed up” from years of being accused of shoplifting or pulled over or in general treated as a criminal when he was doing nothing wrong. He states that the [all white] jury can sympathise, but they cannot understand the man’s need to strike back.
The jury returns not guilty on all counts.
I am unfamiliar with the resolution of the Denny case, but The Practice is typically quite accurate in its legal finaglings (if at the edge of the envelope for drama’s sake) and also in its use of precedents. If such a theory was advanced in that case and accepted by the jury, that is very interesting indeed. I am a white male, myself, and I accept that I cannot understand what it is to be a black man in America. But it seems to me that one is responsible for ones actions no matter what the setting. This finding, if real, creates a dangerous precedent and adds to the invulnerability and anonymity that many people typically feel in a mob setting.