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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Hope you had a fabulous Thanksgiving weekend. Later in the show, we'll have a call in for stories from your Thanksgiving that were very 2021. Maybe they were political things, maybe everyone accommodating everyone else's COVID risk tolerance levels. If anyone did the experiment that Kai Wright and his team came up with that we talked about with them on the show last week to have everyone at Thanksgiving do a YouTube search on the word "patriot" and see what comes up, we'll invite you to call in with the results and see if you learned anything about internet echo chambers. That's all coming up later.

Meanwhile, you might have noticed as we dive in here that a few things happened since our last live show on Wednesday. Oh yes, a new COVID variant was identified and given the name Omicron. The public health analyst said not to panic, but nobody told the financial analysts. The Dow dropped 900 points on Friday before the variant even got its name. Governor Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency already in New York state. It's really a hospital rule state of emergency, as I understand it, that would help with staffing in hotspots if there are any to come.

Of course, there are all kinds of travel bans. You've been hearing about and anger about travel bans. I told you source from experts who always said there would be more variants if the west hoarded all the vaccines. Obviously, we'll talk about all Omicron on today's show. Since our last show, the three killers of Ahmaud Arbery are now the three convicted murderers of Ahmaud Arbery. We'll talk about that in a minute in its own right.

In the context of the other jury decisions in the same week on Kyle Rittenhouse and the Neo Nazi, Neo clan organizers of the infamous Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, remember where they match carrying clan style torches and supportive Confederate statues and chanting, "Jews will not replace us," and things like that. Remember that one? A jury verdict on some of those wonderful people came down. We'll look at the three in the context of each other.

Speaking of bigots, not afraid to just say it out loud, this weekend also featured flat-out anti-Muslim hate speech by a member of Congress. Did you see this story at Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boeber of Colorado on purpose to a crowd, in a public speech in her district with laughter and applause in response? Often on these things, I won't actually play the hate speech so as not to let it out in the world any further. In this case, I think we should know what an elected official is capable of and how they should be held accountable.

Boebert made a "joke" that when she sees her colleague, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, she checks to see if Omar is about to commit a suicide bombing. She was telling a story about seeing a stressed-out capital police officer running toward an elevator, and instead of saying, she was concerned about more January-6th type invaders. Let's pick it up there.

Lauren Boebert: I see a capital police officer running, hurriedly, to the elevator. I see fret, all over his face. He’s reaching, the door is shutting. I can’t open it. What’s happening? I look to my left and there she is: Ilhan Omar. I said, "Well, she doesn’t have a backpack, we should be fine."

Brian Lehrer: "She doesn't have a backpack, I think we'll be fine." Laughter, applause. Of course, no mention of checking to see if white people carrying Tiki Tortures are getting ready to lynch anyone or if her colleague Paul Gosar is carrying knives in the elevator, like in this cartoon this month about murdering their colleague, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, just doubled down on and making up violent images about the squad.

That happened. We'll talk about that. Hanukah started last night. Happy Hanukah to all our Jewish listeners. Is the supply chain supplying enough candles? You need 44 for the whole holiday. Did you know that number two for the first night, three for the second night, all the way up to nine for the last night? Two plus three plus four plus five, et cetera, 44 candles. Did you succeed in buying a box?

With me now, Jamil Smith, senior correspondent for identity, culture, and civil rights for Vox and co-host of their podcast, Vox Conversations. His latest article is called The ironic spectacle of Kyle Rittenhouse's Tucker Carlson interview. He is LA-based and last night retweeted a Yoni Appelbaum cat photo with a caption "Happy Hanukkah to all you cats who celebrate".

Also, Emily Bazelon, Truman Capote Fellow for creative writing at the Yale Law School, co-host of the Slate politics, Gabfest, and a New York Times Magazine staff writer. She is author of the award-winning book Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration. Her latest New York Times Magazine article, maybe it's a reaction to her own book, is called He's Remaking Criminal Justice in L.A. But How Far Is Too Far? Jamil and Emily, thanks for starting your post-Thanksgiving lives with us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Jamil Smith: Thank you.

Emily Bazelon: Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: Jamil, can we start with Congresswoman Lauren Boebert? I said I don't usually replay hate speech in the news because of risk spreading the meme, but when I do, it's usually because somebody in power needs to be held accountable. Minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, so far doesn't seem to be doing it. He only released a statement that did not criticize Omar's remarks at all. It just said, "I talked to Congresswoman Lauren Boebert today. She has apologized for what she said and has reached out to Congresswoman Omar to meet next week." Do you think that's the appropriate response from the leader of all the Republicans of Congress?

Jamil Smith: I think if you want to keep getting Republican votes, perhaps it is the appropriate response. An actual appropriate response, Brian, would be to take this as seriously as it is meant. The context of this is a joke and the idea that we can just blow off bigotry that's spread through humor is really dangerous. Of course, Ilhan Omar, the Congresswoman, she says that this story is completely made up and the apology, by the way, did not go to her. It went to the Muslim, anyone in the Muslim community whom she may have offended, that barely didn't include the Congresswoman. A direct apology at the very least is what is necessary and it should be done in public. Frankly, she should be open to censure by her colleagues in the house.

Brian Lehrer: The Kevin McCarthy statement did say that Boebert was going to reach out to Omar. I think it didn't say it had been done already, the outreach, but was going to. Would that satisfy what you just said?

Jamil Smith: Of course not. I think that that is a private response to a public outrage and it's very convenient for a bigoted comment to be apologized for in private, in a private office meeting, on a phone call, in email. It should be done on the house floor and frankly, other house members should have an opportunity to speak out about that and to condemn what she said.

Leader McCarthy approaches this as if this is not the business of the people. He says that he spoke with the leader Steny Hoyer about facilitating that meeting so that the Congress can get back to talking to each other and working on the challenges facing the American people while the-- One of the biggest challenges facing the American people, of course, is extremist terrorism on the right that's based largely in racism. If you have a Congresswoman feeding that beast, that is the business of the American people.

Brian Lehrer: Jennifer Ruben, the long time conservative in the Washington Post, who got transformed by the rise of Trumpism to the point you just made Jamail wrote that Boebert's speech was consistent with the GOP these days, elevating white power. Quite a thing for a conservative white person to say, but it goes back to the way you started your first answer. Before you really got into the guts of what Boebert did, you said maybe it is a smart thing of Kevin McCarthy to soft pedle this if he wants Republican votes.

Jamil Smith: I'm actually now based in Nashville. Of course, driving all around here in the south just seeing the signs along the side of the road, hearing some of the conversations that you hear regarding politics and regarding how people feel about particular Republican who may have said, or said a racist thing or promoted a racist policy, frequently, I'm encouraged to get over it, frequently, I'm encouraged to like, "Let's move on." It's just, let's not have that conversation, because frankly, one of the problems is that we actually don't teach critical race theory or anything like it in schools. People are not equipped to have this conversation, even as adults. While they may want to indulge in the fleeting comforts that feeling superior to someone else who's brown or Black may afford them, I just don't think that they can actually engage in the conversation in the same way that folks like us who have had to deal with these kinds complications our entire lives can verbalize.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Jamil based in Nashville now, as he just said, so I apologize, Jamil. I said you're LA-based at the beginning. I know that's where you had been. Emily Bazelon, the killers of Ahmaud Arbery all got convicted last week, the father and son McMichael and William Roddy Bryan. Emily, to me as a layperson, this case always looked open and shut. Arbery didn't do anything, wasn't wanted for anything, wasn't reported as having taken anything from that property. He walked around that somehow made them decide to chase him.

Didn't have a weapon or even a backpack, as I've seen it pointed out to put any stolen stuff in if he were to be interested in stealing anything and yet these guys chased him down. They didn't tell police at the time that they were trying for a citizen's arrest. That was only after they got charged from what I read. To me, as a layperson, this looked open and shut even with 11 white people on the jury. For you as a lawyer, law professor, did the prosecutors have to handle it in a certain way to win these convictions?

Emily Bazelon: I don't think we know the answer to that. What I mean by that is that I think there was some consternation about the lack of discussion of race in this trial. For the reasons you said, really looked like the only crime that Ahmaud Arbery committed was running while being a Black man. It seemed, I think, to a lot of commentators that the prosecutors should be pointing that out.

They talked about race a little bit in the trial, but it was pretty minimized. Then we get this conviction from this jury that was 11 out of 12 jurors were white and maybe that was the necessary approach, but maybe it wasn't, because we don't have the counter hypothetical of a trial in which prosecutors talked much more about race.

Brian Lehrer: Jamil, you retweeted Adam Soer from the Atlanta who wrote, "To say the system worked in this case is like saying your car made it home after your entire family had to get out and push it miles down to dirt road." Want to elaborate on that?

Jamil Smith: Yes. I think it's really dangerous actually to celebrate this verdict as a sign of entrenched progress that we've made with regards to racial equity in this country, and especially within our legal system and within the very flawed jury system. While the prosecutors didn't bring up race or racism as much as maybe we expected them to, the defense certainly did. They inferred all kinds of things about Amma Aubrey himself, about the people coming to support the family in the courtroom, commenting a lot about the Black pastors and how they might influence the jury.

Within the context of the trial itself, there was just a series of these dog whistles about Aubrey's appearance, his hygiene, even talking about long dirty toenails. Essentially, every effort that they could have made within the bounds, I guess, of credulity to discredit him, to dehumanize him, essentially to make what these men did okay was certainly deployed by the defense. I think we have to be careful what we talk about the race, whether or not it was used in this trial, it certainly was, it just didn't actually win.

Brian Lehrer: If Lauren Boebert is apologizing on some level for her racist remark, defense attorney, Kevin Gough, has apologized for one of his. Here is that Black pastor's remark that you mentioned.

Kevin Gough: Obviously there's only so many pastors they can have and if their pastor is Al Sharpton right now, that's fine. Then that's it. We don't want anymore Black pastors coming in here or other, Jesse Jackson, whoever was in here earlier this week, sitting with the victim's family trying to influence the jury in this case. I think the court can understand my concern about bringing people in really don't have any ties to this case other than political interests.

Brian Lehrer: I don't think Jesse Jackson had been there, but after he heard that, he decided, "Yes, okay, I'll go." If there's any humor at all in a murder case like this, maybe it was that. Emily, again for you as a lawyer, can you imagine if I was a counselor for the defense in any trial, and I said I didn't want any more white pastors singling out the race of the pastors or any more prominent rabbis coming to support a Jewish family who lost loved one to a killing? Are there any consequences for that in the legal system?

Emily Bazelon: I can't imagine it. It was just-- I don't really have words. The possible repercussions could be a motion for the judge to accuse himself in this trial or other trial because of showing racial bias.

Brian Lehrer: Without the attorney though. Not the judge, the defense attorney? [crosstalk]

Emily Bazelon: The defense attorney. I'm sorry. Yes. Let me retake that. I think that someone could file a bar complaint against the defense attorney, but those kinds of complaints often go nowhere. I think that it's really public shaming that is the consequence here.

Brian Lehrer: Can I get your take again as a lawyer and as somebody who's written a book about progressive prosecutors, that was not the issue here, but still racial justice in the legal system? Jamil just talked a little bit about how we should or shouldn't see progress at large in the verdict in this case, but let's talk about the three together in the last week.

These convictions of Aubrey's murderers, also the civil suit jury award of millions of dollars from the organizers of the Charlottesville rally and the Rittenhouse acquittal.

Of course, these are just the highest-profile cases that have been in the news. All kinds of other cases go on every day. Is the arch of history bending toward racial justice anymore that you can tell maybe since the killing of George Floyd?

Emily Bazelon: The thing that I take the most heart from in those three verdicts you're talking about is how much in Georgia the whole political establishment pushed back against this idea of a citizen's arrest. You saw Republican governor Brian Kemp get behind an effort to the law so that it wasn't providing this kind of excuse for chasing somebody down and shooting them. That seemed like, I don't know how much progress, but like a measure of change that could matter in the state of Georgia. I think it's important also not to read too much into each of these verdicts. They show in the mixed picture because they're each about very specific sets of facts.

We spent a lot of time in the press and I think the public thinking about the Rittenhouse verdict. When I read the jury instructions in that case and understood completely how protective the law of self-defense is in Wisconsin and how even if you have a gun in a public place you have no duty to retreat, I thought they're going to acquit. That was a really fact-bound case and I think drawing a lot of conclusions beyond those facts, you might find those facts unsettling. You might think the law is wrong, but I'm reluctant to draw a lot of conclusions beyond those particular facts.

Brian Lehrer: Anything more on that, Jamil?

Jamil Smith: I think that it's important to note that we have-- it's a good thing that Kyle Rittenhouse would receive a fair trial. It's a good thing that we'd hopefully see the McMichael boys and Mr. Brian receive a fair trial. The thing is that, can we expect the same if the matters were reversed? If I or someone like me were carrying an AR 15 through a civil rights protest in Wisconsin and happened to shoot three people killing two of them no matter what race they are, can we expect that the laws that are on the books would be applied in the same way?

That's unknowable right now. It's certainly something we can suspect and people might say, "Well, of course, they wouldn't." The fact that we don't actually know, we actually rely upon that, one way or the other is a reason why I think that there's some hesitancy for me and from a lot of other people to take these verdicts, as Emily said, as some kind of indication of something broader. These are individual cases decided in individual ways and we need to examine what we can learn from them individually.

Brian Lehrer: Emily, can you say something individually about the Charlottesville case? I think this one made the least news of the three and these Neo-Nazis and Neo clansmen don't have $25 million to give to the family of Heather Higher, the woman who was killed during the rally by that driver who drove into the counter-protestors to give to her family or anyone else. What's the point or precedent of this civil case?

Emily Bazelon: It's a great question. I guess I'd say two things. I think a lot of times we prioritize criminal judgments and criminal consequences over civil consequences, but when you can actually get money compensation, that can actually be something that is helpful for families of victims of crime. It's like a material benefit. Obviously, nobody wants to think of their loved one's life in terms of a monetary value, and I don't mean to suggest that they should, but there is some actual recompense there.

If you end up with a family, that's what's called judgment proof. In other words, what you're just talking about, where they don't actually have the resources to pay up, then obviously that's going to be less money, but it can still matter in terms of shifting redistribution of wealth. It can have punitive economic consequences for the people who have done wrong. I think that's a meaningful remedy.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to take a break and then we're going to continue with Emily Bazelon and Jamil Smith, among other things, the very provocative article that Emily wrote in the New York Times magazine last week about whether progressive prosecution reform in LA is now going too far. We'll get Jamil's reaction to that having lived in LA the last number of years.

We're also going to play a clip of believe it or not Kyle Rittenhouse on Tucker Carlson saying something that you might not have expected to come out of Kyle Rittenhouse's mouth that Jamil wrote an article about. Stay with us for those things and more and we invite your phone calls for Emily Bazelon from the New York Times magazine in Yale Law School and Slate politics Gabfest, and Jamil Smith, senior correspondent for Vox. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet at BrianLehrer. We continue in a minute.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC, as we continue with Emily Bazelon from the New York Times magazine and Yale Law School and more, and Jamil Smith, senior correspondent for Vox and co-host of their podcast Vox Conversations. We'll get to some of your phone calls and tweets. Coming up, Emily, you wrote your book charged about the new generation of progressive prosecutors. I think it's fair to say you were largely cheering them on, but your New York Times magazine piece this month raised the question of whether the progressive prosecutor in LA has gone too far. Who is he, and why'd you frame the article that way?

Emily Bazelon: His name is George Gascon. He was previously the district attorney in San Francisco. Before then, he had a long career in law enforcement as a police chief in San Francisco and Arizona and then as a cop in Los Angeles. I was really interested in this piece in exploring the question of whether progressive prosecutors can take on reducing long sentences for violent crimes.

This is something that has been much trickier in the progressive prosecutor movement. Most of the drop that we've seen in the jail population and in punishment has come from things like not prosecuting possession of marijuana or shorter sentences for theft; things that don't involve violence. What Gascon is trying to do is effectively end very long sentences even for the crime of murder. He did it by issuing a blanket order, no exceptions. I was interested in the tensions that caused in his office.

There's been a lot of dismay among the rank and file prosecutors also among judges and other parts of the legal community. This question of whether a blanket order with no exceptions where no one under the age of 18 should be charged as an adult or nobody should receive a life sentence, whether that's the best, whether that's a politically viable approach, and whether it's the best policy.

Brian Lehrer: Jamil, you lived in LA. I think I saw this on Emily's Twitter feed, but I'm not exactly sure where I saw it but it was child abuse prosecutor in LA, Jonathan Hatami, who treated Saturday. Six smash-and-grab robberies took place in LA Friday. LAPD issued a city-wide tactical alert. Violent crime has risen. Every month Gascon has been LADA. His response, crime is not on the rise in a LA.

We need a DA who actually prosecutes crime, leads, and believes in public safety first. That's one prosecutor's opinion. How do you see his tenure so far and in the context of this tension between reducing crime, especially violent crime and reducing mass incarceration?

Jamil Smith: Well, one of the things that I felt was most fascinating about Emily's article, along Jennifer [unintelligible 00:25:27] the one I leave her out as well, the fact that Gascon came into office with a lot of people some of whom were identifying as prison abolitionists, as is quoted in the article who were just coming in and saying, "We want to do it this way right now." Apparently, I guess that's rubbing some people the wrong way. I saw in the article, one person was quoted as saying, "If you want to make sustainable change, you don't treat people at the enemy, you build respect."

Someone who is sympathetic to the argument of prison abolition, I think this is a really interesting look at how that process actually happens if it were to happen. How do we in fact enact the principle of prison abolition, and why is it important that change may happen maybe a little bit more slowly than people wanted to? If we implement it or slowly, could it actually be more effective and long-lasting? I think that's-- [crosstalk] questions.

Brian Lehrer: Well, what do you mean "prison abolition". Some people may have been hearing that term for the first time out of your mouth just now, and maybe with shoes on other feet, they'd say, "Wait, do you want the McMichael not to have to go to prison for killing Ahmaud Arbery? You know what I mean?

Jamil Smith: Well, I speak as someone everyone should know as someone who's experienced a family member, who's died due to violence and has seen with his own eyes the sentencing of his killers. Having that early experience in my life, it is something that I do think that we should consider as an option because frankly, as a person who had that experience, I don't necessarily feel any particular way about how many years that person spends behind bars.

My family member is still gone. I understand that the pain is there, but we cannot use our system of criminal punishment as a way to implement retribution. It's about ostensibly finding justice. I don't necessarily think that justice is locking people away in order so that we can feel safe.

Brian Lehrer: What would it be, especially if the person is considered a threat to kill more people?

Jamil Smith: Well, I think about what Gascon's predecessor, Jackie Lacey, was all about. She definitely was about preserving the status quo of a system that was frankly discriminatory in a number of levels. It is also frankly not really solving the problem. There were still crime in LA. when Jackie Lacey was DA. There are other factors that are contributing to the rise in crime that are being laid at the feet of progressive DAs I think in some ways that are unfair.

As someone who lived in Los Angeles under the reign of Jackie Lacey as DA, I could just say that I definitely felt a lot safer knowing that there was somebody in office who was not about empowering the police, who was not about imprisoning people for petty offenses like marijuana or other kinds of drug possessions. Frankly, it wasn't about trying to make sure that a system that has been systemically racist stays the way that it is.

Brian Lehrer: Of course, Emily, your article is more about violent crime, not small crime, and this particular DA. What can you say, what can you conclude as a lawyer and a journalist about the intersection between the rising crime which is going on everywhere right now, more or less during the pandemic, and whatever the DA and the progressive prosecutor, DA in LA is changing now?

Emily Bazelon: Well, I don't think there's any proof of cause and effect here. The rise in violent crime in LA started a year before Georgia Gascon was elected under the watch of Jackie Lacey, under the watch of the Los Angeles County Sheriff, who's been a big critic of Gascon's. I think it's really important to keep that front and center. I also think though-- I think Jamil is getting at this, if I understand him right, that one of the big challenges for reducing incarceration, especially for violent crimes is to have alternative services in place.

If you're going to say to a 17-year-old who committed a murder, we're not going to try you as an adult and that means you're can get out by the age of 25, which is the law in California for the juvenile system, we need need to make sure that there are services in place for that person so that they come out more prepared to be a productive citizen with more education and more resources at their disposal. That's just a huge challenge. It is not how our prison system was really constructed.

Rehabilitation has not been our priority and we have enough diversion services. I think that is really the case in Los Angeles as well as lots of other places. New York actually has been a real leader on this front. I think there's a kind of question about which comes first. If you're talking about prison abolition, can you do that now or should that happen in a way where you're making sure to protect public safety by providing more rehabilitation and setting up those alternatives?

Brian Lehrer: New York's going to be an interesting place to watch as Eric Adams comes in as a new op-ed in the Daily News supporting "stop and frisk" when used appropriately. We have a new progressive prosecutor coming in in Manhattan, who says he doesn't want to necessarily put people in jail for illegal gun possession if they haven't actually used the gun. They may be headed for an interesting dynamic in New York City. Richard in Manhattan, a defense attorney with a question for Emily. Richard, you're on WNYC. Hello?

Richard: I wasn't listening carefully, but you indicated that the defense attorney and I'm on Arbery case or actually the other case where Jesse Jackson appeared in the courtroom and he objected to that a complaint should be made to the ethics board. The exact opposite is true. I've done hundreds of trials. Very serious crimes.

I've done that many, many times. When you feel as if your client is not going to get a fair trial, you put it on the record and it's not because he's a racist, but you're politicizing all of this when it's really the duty of the defense attorney to do something like that, to put it on the record, and make become an issue two or three years down the road on an appeal. He's not violating any ethical code.

In fact, he's lending an argument to ineffective assistance of counsel if he realized it and did not do it. There's nothing wrong with him doing that. If he wanted to object and I've objected in my own trials that I've had. I did a serial killer, nobody remembers it's 25 years ago, 30 years ago, where I objected to all the blasts because he was a very racist. He was killing people just because they were Black. I objected to a lot of the Black jurors being beyond the jury. I wasn't a racist. My partner was a Black man.

Brian Lehrer: Let me lemme jump in only because Emily has to go and under a minute and I want to give her a chance to respond. Emily.

Emily Bazelon: Well, I think the issue here is whether object to the presence of pastors in the courtroom by talking about them as Black pastors, was that gratuitous, what's the relevance here? Is it really necessary to get that on the record in defense of your client? It seemed at the time there was just that came out of nowhere and brought race into the trial in this way that seemed to me beyond what was necessary to say. I understand that defense lawyers absolutely have a responsibility to zealously advocate for their client and you see it differently.

Brian Lehrer: Emily, I know you got to go. Jamil is going to stay with us for a few more minutes. Emily Bazelon, New York Times magazine, author of the book, Charged, Slate Political Gabfest, Yale University law professor. Thank you very much for joining us today.

Emily Bazelon: Thanks so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Jamil, I want to play this clip that you wrote about on Vox about the Rittenhouse case, about something Rittenhouse said on Tucker Carlson the next day on Vox. Here's the clip you cited.

Kyle Rittenhouse: I believe there's a lot of prosecutorial misconduct, not just in my case but in other cases. It's just amazing to see how much a prosecutor can take advantage of somebody. If they did this to me, imagine what they could have done to a person of color who doesn't maybe have the resources I do or is not widely publicized like my case.

Brian Lehrer: Did it surprise you Jamil that Kyle Rittenhouse would say that in that way? Could him of all people saying that help the criminal justice reform movement?

Jamil Smith: Well, I wasn't particularly surprised because I'm not somebody who came into this thinking that Kyle Rittenhouse was necessarily a racist. Whether or not he was a racist in his bones, so to speak, was not really my concern. What my concern was is how could this person, who is in trouble, use the system's biases to his benefit? It was fascinating to see, as I wrote earlier,someone who used the spectacle of his tears on the stand.

As I said in the piece, it's a try [unintelligible 00:35:32] tactic for white men in trouble to essentially appeal to their own humanity. It is fascinating that while he said these things, which are true, he only came to those realizations after he'd been through the negative terrible experience of our legal system himself after he-- We shouldn't have to experience these things ourselves in order to come to such realizations. I understand that he is 18 years old granted, but it is interesting that he and Tucker Carlson reacted to these guidings. They were shocked.

Understand that these things could happen in America. Remind that Julius Jones who was professing his innocence to a murder in Oklahoma, he just escaped a lethal injection by the grace of that Republican governor. Of course, he is now locked in prison for the rest of his life for a crime that he says he did not commit. The idea that the sudden realization is, what's at problem here? They can't discuss the terrible state of American Jewish prudence without centering themselves.

Brian Lehrer: Let me get one more call in for you. The, folks, we have Apoorva Manville, New York Times science correspondent standing by to come on next and answer all our questions about the Omicron variant. One more call for Jamil Smith from Vox and it's Mr. White in the Bronx. Hello, Mr. White. You're on WNYC.

Mr. White: Yes. Good morning, sir.

Brian Lehrer: Good morning.

Mr. White: I just want to know why we're not talking about that young girl in the same state as Mr. Rittenhouse who was attacked. She's in jail right now, has not been to trial two years for a man that is a known pedophile. Young Black girl in jail, white man dead. She doesn't say she didn't kill him. She says, "I killed him to protect myself." I don't hear no conversations going on about that.

Brian Lehrer: Well, I'm glad you called about it. That's the Crystal Kaiser case, I believe is her name. There was an NPR story that I know a lot of our listeners heard is true. We haven't talked about it yet on this show. Jamil, are you familiar with that case? This comes up sometimes when women usually kill their abusers. Is this self-defense or is this murder? I think here we are again.

Jamil Smith: Yes. Of course, I actually thank the caller for bringing this up. Of course, Crystal Kaiser is a 19-year-old woman in Milwaukee who was charged with killing a man who she alleges was trafficking her for sexual exploitation and abuse. She's finally been released on bail. This is like two years. This was basically back in the summer of last year. She had a $400,000 bail. It's something that definitely continues to come up in our news because while certain people within our society, I think are granted the benefit of the doubt when it comes to self-defense, particularly women who are the victims of men are not granted that same kind of leeway, that same kind of belief.

Really at the heart of it, we need to believe women when they say that they and abused, they have been trafficked, they have been harassed, they have been raped. They have no incentive within our society to allege otherwise. Let's use that as the baseline and we need to use that as a start, not simply of way to change our own attitudes but also a way of changing our system.

Brian Lehrer: Jamil Smith, co-host of the Vox Podcast, Vox Conversations, and senior correspondent for identity, culture, and race at Vox. His latest article is about that Kyle Rittenhouse clip that we played before and he's writing and tweeting and talking all the time. Jamil, thanks a lot for coming out. We always appreciate it.

Jamil Smith: Thank you, Brian. Appreciate you.

[00:40:28] [END OF AUDIO]

 

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