Opinion ID: 1349791
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Real and Substantial Possibility of Prejudice

Text: We must next determine whether defendants have established that there is a real and substantial possibility that these extrinsic influences could have affected the juries' verdict. When considering that (1) the juries viewed the film Malcolm X as a group near the end of trial, (2) the juries, or a member, were exposed during deliberations to the fact the City of Detroit was bracing for a riot in the event of an acquittal, and (3) the juries were exposed to extrinsic information, in part inaccurate, that defendants were previously members of the STRESS police unit, we believe that each defendant has established his initial burden. The first of these influences that we address is the Malcolm X film. The film is a work based on Malcolm X's autobiography. The juries viewed the film with the understanding that it had been provided, with three others, as entertainment by the trial court during a period late in trial where there were no trial proceedings. The film begins with the voice of Malcolm X's character giving a provocative speech charging the white man with being the greatest murderer on earth while the viewer is shown footage of Rodney King being beaten by Los Angeles police officers, interspersed with a picture of an American flag. [15] The Rodney King videotape is shown in slow motion, in eight segments, as the American flag begins to burn. Id. The voice-over makes an explicit reference to the City of Detroit, the location of the incident in the instant case, by stating that the black community has been deprived of democracy in the streets of Detroit. Id. The factual similarities between (1) Rodney King's assault by police officers in Los Angeles as captured by the video shown at the beginning of Malcolm X and (2) the police brutality inflicted against Malice Green in Detroit, as charged, are striking. The parallel is unmistakable. [16] Later, in a different scene of the film, the character portraying Malcolm X states: No, I'm telling you that devil has made dead souls out of you and I[sic].... Why, my brothers and sisters, he should get down on his knees. He should beg our mercy. Oh, my brothers and sisters, his kind has committed God's greatest crime against your and my kind every day of his life. He ought to get on his knees and say he's committed the crime. But does he do that? Does he do that? No. No, he scorns you. He splits your head with his night stick, he busts you upside of the head with that billy club, he calls you a nigger. I'm telling you he calls you a coon. That's what he says to youBoy, Nigger. Four hundred years is long enough. You've been sitting down, laying down, and bowing down for four hundred years. I think it's time to stand up. [Emphasis added.] In the second half of the film that was only seen by the Budzyn jury, [17] Malcolm X's character is forced to rescue a member of the Nation of Islam from the police station. A bystander explains that a police officer had crack[ed] him with (presumably) his night stick and the man began to bleed like a stuck hog. [18] Soon after this episode, in scenes only viewed by the Budzyn jury, Malcolm X's character gives a speech before an audience in which he states (interspersed with actual footage from the 1960s of violence by white police officers against the black community): A hundred years ago, they used to put on white sheets and sic bloodhounds on us. Well, nowadays they've traded in the sheets___well, some of them traded in sheets___ ... they have traded in those white sheets for police uniforms. They've traded in the bloodhounds for the police dogs.