Chai Soua Vang will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.
John Roberts will likely spend the rest of his life as the reigning Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
The coincidence of the Roberts confirmation hearings and the Vang trial should make us aware of how the justice system works.
It helps if you’re not a minority.
But if you’re white, smart and conservative with friends in high places, you’ll go to the top.
What else can we conclude after the Vang verdict?
On Sep. 16, an all-white jury found Vang, 36, guilty of six counts of first-degree intentional homicide and three counts of attempted homicide.
Vang faces judicial overkill: six mandatory life sentences, plus an additional 225 years in prison.
Vang is the hunter from St. Paul, Minn., via Stockton, Calif., via Laos, who found himself in the Sawyer County woods in Wisconsin, Nov. 21, 2004.
As he sat in a deer stand with rifle, he encountered members of a hunting party who claimed he was trespassing.
Vang said to a Chicago Tribune reporter, later admitted as evidence, that he thought he was still on public land in the Wisconsin woods. In Minnesota, tree stands are built on public lands, he said.
But the hunters, led by Robert Crotteau, 42, were unrelenting in their abuse of Vang.
Vang said Crotteau used this language: “Did you know you were on 400 acres of private property, gook?”
When Vang apologized and said he didn’t see a sign, he said Crotteau gave this response: “I don’t have to put a sign on, you f——— chink…I’m sick of you f——— Asians coming to my land. If you all keep coming to my land I will kick your f——— Asian ass.”
When people are talking racist talk in a hunting environment, what would you do?
Vang said he walked away, but someone fired at him.
It triggered off a rage in Vang, who admitted to shooting six of the hunters, including Crotteau.
“I did what I had to do to defense myself,” said Vang at his trial. “I did what I had to do to stay alive.”
Some observers may point out that Vang’s testimony contradicts an initial story he told investigators. Vang said one of the hunters stole his gun and shot the other hunters.
Was Vang now just playing the race card?
I don’t think so.
At the trial it was Vang’s word against two of the surviving hunters, Lauren Hesebeck, 49, and Terry Willers, 48.
Both hunters had slight contradictions in their accounts. Vang said Willers fired first and started the shooting. At first Hessebeck said Willers fired at Vang. Later, Hessebeck said Willers didn’t.
Terry Willers said there were no threats or physical contact with Vang.
And yet Hessebeck did confirm the swearing and racist taunts toward Vang.
How much could a racial taunt trigger the emotional response from a Hmong refugee, whose life has been determined by his family’s jungle fighting against communists?
Only from all accounts, that wasn’t even considered by the jury.
It was the Deep South all over again. But this time it was deep in the North woods — and against Asians.
The jury foreman, William F. Bremer, 58, a federal highway engineer from Madison, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he was struck by the violence, but not race.
“After we were done deliberating, I asked if anybody had any concerns about how we conducted ourselves, [regarding] race particularly. I understood that we were all Caucasian. … But it played no factor whatsoever,” Bremer told the Sentinel.
What the jury did was take the narrowest possible perspective to thread a guilty verdict through a needle.
It took just three hours.
A long time to thread a needle. A short time to convict a human being.
Three hours? O.J.’s pre-trial hearings were longer.
But the prosecution was crafty. It took race out, by essentially admitting the race and saying, “OK, so I disrespect you, now you have to shoot me?”
Makes it to defend a man who admits to shooting six people.
But consider what a more diverse, understanding jury could have done with the Vang case, taking it whole, considering race and then handing out justice.
Full acquittal may have taken the second coming of Johnny Cochran. But guilt on lesser charges would not have been unreasonable considering the situation’s racist wick.
It was lit by the hunters, there are no doubts in my mind about that.
I’d say expect more negative outcomes like the Vang case under a legal era helmed by Roberts.
Civil rights attorneys futilely battled the Roberts nomination last week. But as one lawyer told me, it was important to put Roberts’ civil rights history on the record.
Roberts has been a hostile critic of minority rights. As Ann Marie Tallman, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund said, if just a few of Roberts’ published legal opinions had become federal law, thousands of undocumented children would be barred from public school, a national ID system would be established to facilitate racial profiling and electoral empowerment for minorities would be lost.
Vang’s all-white jury, Roberts’ all-white perspective.
It seems we are going backwards in this progressively diverse country.
Reach Emil at emil@amok.com.