When the media and police departments decide someone is not the “perfect victim”, citizens must take criminal investigations into their own hands
When the media and police departments decide someone is not the “perfect victim”, citizens must take criminal investigations into their own hands. In this episode, we analyze the concept of the so-called “perfect victim” and how people seek justice for those who don’t fit the ideal profile. We hear about the role Keith Warren’s family played as citizen detectives and wrap the episode with an interview from Lonita Baker, co-counsel for Breonna Taylor and her family.
This podcast includes graphic discussion of a violent death. Listener discretion is advised.
The “Uprooted" podcast is the companion to the new discovery+ series “Uprooted,” streaming exclusively on discovery+. Go to discoveryplus.com/uprooted to start your 7-day free trial today.
Find episode transcripts here: https://uprooted.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-4-the-perfect-victim
Damon Hewitt:
The perfect victim notion is almost, uh, a thing of, you have to be of such pure innocence that anyone anywhere will always believe that you were wrong.
Alicia Garza:
Attorney, Damon Hewitt
Damon Hewitt:
It, it connects me to the notion of black people, always having to be twice as good to succeed. Well, a perfect victim has to be twice as innocent and in order to actually engender the empathy or sympathy of the masses in America, because sometimes just being a regular black person, ain't enough to be deem worthy of empathy sympathy.
Alicia Garza:
I'm Alicia Garza, and you are listening to uprooted the companion podcast to the Discovery Plus mini series reexamining the Keith Warren case. In this episode, we explore the idea of the perfect victim. The notion that only people who fit a certain prototype are worthy of empathy from the public attention, from the media and justice from the courts. We'll talk about how Keith wasn't the perfect victim and how his family filled the gap by becoming citizen detectives to pursue justice and accountability for Keith. And later on, we'll hear from Lonita Baker Co-Counsel for Brianna Taylor, who will detail her most recent experience with the court system in her pursuit of justice for Taylor and keeping the police and the justice system accountable. This is Uprooted. First off, what makes for the perfect victim?
Damon Hewitt:
The perfect victim phenomena is really a hierarchy of humanity where black people and other people of color often being on the lower ranks.
Alicia Garza:
Damon Hewitt is the President and Executive Director of the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights under Law
Damon Hewitt:
And it's really a question of whose humanity is recognized and whose humanity is valued and who is believed and who is not.
Alicia Garza:
On the very top of that hierarchy. The people who are believed, no surprise are white victims and the most perfect victim is a young white female. Usually maintaining a Eurocentric standard of beauty. This victim is typically perceived as nonthreatening and is positioned as someone the larger public can empathize with Keith Warren. On the other hand was on the bottom of the hierarchy. He was a young black man in a largely white neighborhood.
Damon Hewitt:
You know, you see this in the mainstream media, a black man or a black woman is killed by police. And the first thing media wants to do is, well, do they have a, a quote on quote, criminal history? What were they doing at the time? How did they bring this upon themselves?
Alicia Garza:
We've seen this treatment over and over again within the media with the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, George Floyd, how all of them were painted as thugs or criminals. Keith we know was a good guy. He was well liked by everyone, but the racist perception that he was just another young black man involved in something untoward that impacted how his death was covered and investigated at the time the police labeled his death, a suicide and refused to investigate further. The total media coverage of Keith's death in 1986, amounted to a few lines in a police log. It would take another six years before the larger media would pay attention to his case. The perfect victim problem goes deeper than the media and the police. When someone who doesn't fit the criteria goes to court, it can drastically affect their outcomes in the case.
Angelo Pinto:
If you're black and if you're brown and you're automatically not a perfect victim, and you kind of gotta prove you're a perfect victim. At some point, during the course of your victimization,
Alicia Garza:
Angelo Pinto is an attorney organizer and Co-Founder of Until Freedom. He spent most of last year working on the Brianna Taylor case. And he says that what happened to Brianna after her death is a fitting example of how the non-perfect victim gets treated.
Angelo Pinto:
As her name and her case got more visibility there were all these attempts to just tear her down and not allow her to be a credible victim, right? Or this perfect victim.
Alicia Garza:
News reports claimed she was knee deep in criminal activity that she'd been running drugs, both of which were untrue. Some outlets, even falsely claimed she had been fired from her job.
Angelo Pinto:
So there were all of this, this speculation and these attempts to say she deserved what happened to her. And it wasn't anyone else's fault, but her own.
Alicia Garza:
Angelo says this wasn't merely a hit to Brianna's reputation and legacy. It also affected the outcome of the investigation.
Angelo Pinto:
What was most important to law enforcement was really saying that Brianna Taylor deserved it because I think the reason that that was important was because if she didn't deserve it, it implicated them. And it said that they were doing something that was iJust and there was a need for accountability. But when you don't have a perfect victim, I think oftentimes what people are able to do is say, there's no need for accountability, right? This happened and we were doing what we were supposed to do.
Alicia Garza:
Angelo says that to completely understand. You just have to look at someone on the other side of the spectrum and how they were treated.
Angelo Pinto:
There's just such a huge contradiction. When you see someone, um, like Brianna Taylor killed at the hands of police and essentially slandered while their case is happening while the public is becoming aware of it, but you have someone like Kyle written house who you literally killed individuals and is given, as I say, more than the benefit of the doubt.
Alicia Garza:
Keith never got an in depth investigation. Soon after his death, Keith's mother Mary Couey realized that if she wanted justice, she would have to find it herself
Deborah Turner:
Deep down in her heart. She knew. And the more she pry, the more she was poking at him, more stuff would come out. Little bitty things at a time.
Alicia Garza:
This is Deborah Turner, Mary Couey's sister, Keith's aunt. Deborah says Mary was smart bullheaded. She knew the police case was full of holes.
Deborah Turner:
She knew she couldn't bring it back, but she wanted to let 'em know like what they did was wrong and it, it was wrong. And so, you know, it was up to them to make it right.
Alicia Garza:
Deborah watched her sister push for answers over and over, despite getting stonewalled by the police. But Mary remained diligent. She even hired a private investigator. It was due to the efforts of Mary and her supporters, including private investigator, Joe Alercia that Keith's body was exhumed in 1992. And an autopsy was finally performed. It was because of these efforts that the case got more media coverage from there. Mary went on to petition the medical examiner to look at Keith's case. Once again, she didn't plan to stop until she got the truth.
Deborah Turner:
She had this burning that she was going to find out. She was not going to accept what they said. She was not going to be dismissed. And that's what they wanted to tell her. This is what we came up with. So take it and go on. And she did not take it. She never would go away. And they hated that.
Alicia Garza:
In 2009, Mary died suddenly. Deborah says all of the blood, sweat, and tears she put into advocating for Keith finally took its toll.
Deborah Turner:
Cause she worked until her last dying day trying to vindicate or trying to find out what the real truth was. So she could be at peace, but he never, she never got that results from whatever else. And that's when Sherri picked up the Baton right then and there,
Alicia Garza:
Sherri is Keith's sister. She's the only one left. And just like Mary, she has that same drive. That same bullheadedness.
Sherri Warren:
For me. My motivation is somebody wanted to silence this. Somebody wanted this to go away. Somebody wanted this. As I was told after my mother died, oh, we thought that this was gonna go away when she died. Right?
Alicia Garza:
But for Sherri, the trail is now cold. The area where Keith died is developed. The tree he hung from is gone. The case is now impossible to solve. So she's adjusted her goals. Her biggest effort now is to get the coroner to change Keith's death certificate. She doesn't want the cause of death to stay listed as suicide, but even such a simple request has been extremely difficult.
Sherri Warren:
It's irritating because you, you want a system to work with you, not against you. And I don't know what my family did to Montgomery County to make the system work against us and not with us. And you're like, well, why, why my family? Like, what did we do to you to, to bring all this to where we are today? Like, what did we do to
Alicia Garza:
You? Even though it's been decades now over 30 years, Sherri struggles, to understand how the system could fail Keith so badly.
Sherri Warren:
And it just piss pisses you off. Cause it wasn't. It's so unnecessary. I'm not saying that Keith's death shouldn't, he shouldn't have died, like shit happens like it's supposed to, but not investigating it. Not only did it rob him of justice, but it robbed us of life happiness.
Alicia Garza:
So now Sherri asking for the one thing she has power to ask for. She's asking for closure.
Deborah Turner:
Acknowledgement of my mother's blood, sweat, and tears. Acknowledgement that something happened to my brother and it wasn't suicide. Acknowledgement that the system was broken and it's fixable. Acknowledgement that this will not happen to somebody else's family, because until you acknowledge it, it's gonna continue to be an issue.
Alicia Garza:
So far. In this episode, we've heard from attorneys, Damon Hewitt and Angelo Pinto about how the idea of the perfect victim is pervasive in both popular culture and the criminal justice system. We've heard how it affects a victim's chance of getting justice. Keith's family members, Deborah Turner, and Sherri Warren told us about how the family decided to get justice on their own terms up next, we'll hear from Lonita Baker, Co-Counsel for Brianna Taylor. She'll take us deeper into the case and talk about keeping the police and the justice system accountable.
Lonita Baker:
My name is Lonita Baker. I am an attorney in Louisville, Kentucky. I, uh, had the honor of representing the family of Brianna Taylor, but throughout my legal career, I've served as both a criminal defense attorney, a prosecutor, and uh, also practice civil litigation and civil rights.
Alicia Garza:
Tell us about your role in the Brianna Taylor case. How did you get involved and why did you get involved?
Lonita Baker:
Yes, Brianna Taylor's family reached out to me, uh, actually the day after Brianna was killed. So back she was killed on March 13th, 2020. So that, um, following Saturday, uh, March 14th, I got a call and set up a meeting with her family. I had worked on some more locally high profile, uh, civil rights cases. And so people in Louisville knew that, uh, I was one of the few attorneys that handled civil rights cases and police, uh, in cases against the police department. And so that's what made them reach out to me, uh, after Brianna was murdered. My role was as that a civil, um, civil attorney and so to push, to hold the city liable for Brianna's murder, the families of victims that who are murdered by the police department. They're not necessarily interested in the financial outcome that comes with civil cases, but they get civil attorneys more so to, to get justice for their family members. So a part of that representing the family was also pushing for criminal charges, uh, to be filed against the officers responsible for her murder. We have not been successful in that yet. Uh, there's still a, a federal investigation ongoing and, and hopefully something comes of that soon.
Alicia Garza:
Can you help shed some light on the process of how something gets to a courtroom? You know, for some of us, we only see the kind of end result, right? Which often is like a trial. Sometimes it's televised a lot of times, it's not, but we see the end result, but a lot of people don't know what goes into bringing a case like Brianna's into court. So tell us a little bit about that process. And at what point is somebody actually charged versus convicted? Like just break it down for people.
Lonita Baker:
Yeah. So gen, uh, a case starts with police involvement generally, uh, some states and in Kentucky is one of those states that will allow an, an individual to file a criminal complaint with the prosecutor's office. But most states don't have have that, but so 99% of cases that make it to court start with police interaction. Uh, the police officers file the charges and charges may be filed before an individual's arrested. It may be concurrent with the person being arrested, but they don't necessarily have to happen at the same time. Some people are charged criminally without ever having to be arrested as well. So it starts with the criminal interaction. The charge is filed in court. And then from court, you have one judge determine if there's probable cause to send the case to a grand jury, or it can be directly presented to a grand jury.
Lonita Baker:
A grand jury is made up of people like me and you, uh, they're randomly selected. Uh, the prosecutor is generally responsible for presenting evidence to the grand jury. And I will say as much as you will hear prosecutors act like, oh, the grand jury did its responsibility. Sometimes you do have a grand jury that truly takes it upon themself to do what's right under the name of law. But a lot of times the prosecutor is, is recommending yes, we recommend charges be indicted. No, we don't recommend charges be indicted. And they're kind of the legal advisor to the grand jury. And so the grand jury takes their recommendations and most of the time follow them. So prosecutors do have a lot of say in, uh, the grand jury process, once indictment comes, then you go through a series of pretrial conferences, file motions before the judge allowing the judge to rule on whether certain evidence would be admitted.
Lonita Baker:
And then you get to the trial where you have the petite jury. You could also be tried before a judge, but that's up to the defendant to decide, do I wanna, uh, judge to determine, um, what's happening or do I want a petite jury, a jury to, to determine, uh, my fate? So I, so when I say trial, normally I deflect to jury trial because that's typically what we see. Uh, most people would rather their fate be in the hands of, you know, what, depending on what state you're in six to 12 jurors versus one judge, because it and that jury verdict has to be unanimous. So either guilty, not guilty, if you're not, if it's not unanimous, you have, what's called a hung jury. And if you get a hung jury, then you can go all the way back through trying it again. But a lot of times that's when settlement negotiations start to pick up as well.
Alicia Garza:
Let's jump into a couple of themes here that I think are important to understand this case. How would you describe the term, the perfect victim? Where does this idea come from and did Brianna Taylor get the benefit of being considered a perfect victim?
Lonita Baker:
Oh, begin with your second question. And no, Brianna Taylor did not get the benefit of being the perfect victim, but I think that she did get some benefit, you know, once we were able to get her story out there, I do think that America saw what happened and, and, and believes that what happened was truly wrong. And I do think some of that came because Brianna was a hard worker woman who worked two jobs, had never been in trouble. And knowing that the investigation that was ongoing had absolutely nothing to do with her. And so I guess to some extent, she had some benefit of it, but she did not get the benefit, you know, from the police and prosecutor perspective because of who she was affiliated with. And I think that a lot of times when you talk about what's the perfect victim before we ever get to court, so many things are, are determined by the police department or the prosecutor and what they think, uh, oh, we may win this.
Lonita Baker:
We may not. And I think that we've gone to, we, the, the criminal justice system has gotten to a point to where we're so focused on wins or losses that prosecutors don't truly effectuate justice and give victims the right to their day in court. And it's because, oh, what do they do? They're unemployed, or, or they, they have a criminal record or they're affiliated with the drug dealer and they just don't want their hands they don't wanna be tied to it, but those, anyone has their right to, to justice for justice on their behalf. So any anyone that's been killed, they deserve the privilege of being their case being investigated. So we need police officers and prosecutors alike to take off their blinders when it comes to someone not being perfect, not having a, a spotless criminal record.
Alicia Garza:
Mm-hmm
Lonita Baker:
Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both. I think that when citizens start to dig into and, and, and try to do the fact finding, we have such a desire to get things out in the public quickly. Now that, you know, we may get one piece of information and run with it, but you have to do a little bit more digging before putting it out there in a public space. So I, I do think that public detectives have a purpose, but I think that if we're gonna take on that role of trying to find out what happened, we have to make sure one we're aware of what the laws are out here, knowing what you can do, knowing what needs to be met for criminal charges to be brought, but just also being responsible with information that's being put out there.
Alicia Garza:
I wanna talk a little bit about how we advocate when somebody is not deemed the perfect victim. And this is often true with black communities and communities of color, right? There's already a presumption of guilt. There's a presumption of criminality, but the legal system in theory is supposed to presume you innocent until proven guilty mm-hmm
Lonita Baker:
Definitely we had to get to know Brianna through other means. And, and, and when you say that it's not just those people who are gonna say the great things about Brianna, not just her mom, not just her sister. So you really have to take time to interview with her coworkers. You know, people who she went to school with her teachers, uh, getting those school records, work, work records. Mm-hmm
Lonita Baker:
I mean, you had the same thing with all of George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Brianna, who the media's so quick to wanna put negative information out about them. That many times attorneys are playing catch up to get the information, to dispute what they're seeing. And I always tell people that's one of the actual benefits that we had of the media, not really latching onto Brianna's case too early mm-hmm
Alicia Garza:
Talk to me a little bit about why we're still waiting for accountability and justice in this case. I mean, certainly, as you mentioned before, there was a civil case. There was a 12 million settlement. You can't put a price on somebody's life and we still don't have charges. There's no accountability in this case. And so why do you think that Brianna Taylor and her family still have yet to receive justice?
Lonita Baker:
I think that the only thing that's preventing Brianna's family from getting justice is the benefit of the doubt that prosecutors give to police officers that they don't give to everyday citizens. If what happened to Brianna had been done by anyone other than police officers, you know, they like to say, oh, well, Kenneth Walker, Brianna's boyfriend fired shot. He was well within his right to do so. Mm-hmm
Alicia Garza:
Mm-hmm
Lonita Baker:
So I've been able to navigate through those situations because I've served on all sides of, we say the V in court, the, the versus, so I've been the defense attorney. I've been the prosecutor. What happened with Kyle Rittenhouse trial. I've never seen neither as a prosecutor, um, that the, the openness with which this judge was so comfortable showing, um, that he was not unbiased, that he, he was not neutral in that case. I hope that attorneys in Wisconsin file judicial ethics complaints against them. But, and I think that more of that needs to happen. Um, you know, we do have law lawyers and judges have rules of professional responsibility that they're supposed to adhere to. And that's the one thing we never do, really, whether it's citizens or other attorneys, we never really push for that change. And it may be something that we need, especially as legal profession need to do to hold our people more accountable, our own profession, more accountable to eliminate some of those biases, call that type of behavior out.
Alicia Garza:
What has been the impact of Brianna's death on her loved ones, as well as the community. There are so many families and communities out here who experience and have been impacted by police violence, police misconduct, their cases never make national news, but for this family in particular, how have they been impacted by Brianna's death? And by the subsequent process of trying to get accountability for Brianna?
Lonita Baker:
It's been very hard. And one of the hardest things is that justice has invaded them. And so while so many people like she wants to be there, she wants to fight. She's happy for those families that have since gotten ingested. She's very happy. You know, that George Floyd's, uh, or Derek Chauvin was, was convicted of, of murdering, uh, George Floyd. She's very happy with the result, the guys that killed Ahmaud Arbrey, and, and she's built relationships with these families. Um, but at the same time, she's hurt that she doesn't have that. And I think that sometimes people don't realize that the family, they grieved in public, they somehow been thrust into having to be policy experts, thrust into this advocacy role for others, but yet still not getting the justice that they deserved. And so it's conflicting because she definitely wants to be there. She definitely wants to push for change. She doesn't want what happened to Brianna to happen to anyone else, but it's just like, but, but why can't I get, why, why are they not held responsible? You know, just this week, the final officer that was fired for his role in murdering Brianna was trying to get his job back in that hearing happened this week. So she's there, you know, having to be at those hearings to make sure that they don't get their job back.
Alicia Garza:
So talk to me a little bit about what justice would look like for Brianna Taylor.
Lonita Baker:
Yeah, I think at this point and that short of them being charged and, and, you know, we still hold our hopes out for a federal indictment shorter than being charged. I don't think that anything else would suffice.
Alicia Garza:
Is there anything you'd like to leave our listeners with today?
Lonita Baker:
Just know that if we continue to all work together and push for change, it will come. It's not overnight. We've seen that it's not coming as fast as any of us would like, but we definitely cannot give up and we will get rid of this having to be a perfect victim in order for our communities to get justice.
Alicia Garza:
Mm, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for all of your tireless work. We appreciate you.
Speaker 6:
Thank you.
Alicia Garza:
That's it for this week. Thanks for listening to uprooted the companion podcast to the discovery plus series. I'm Alicia Garza on the next episode, generational trauma and how it affects mental health. How do people cope with it and how do they fight it? And we'll talk to Dr. Danielle Hairston, a psychiatrist who studies the effects of racism on mental health.
Danielle Hairston:
I, we have to speak up against these things. We can't just say that, oh, the way that I survived, the way that my grandmother survived, the way that my mother survives is just to not talk about it. Just be quiet, like being quiet and not talking about it has not gotten any of us anywhere. Never have. I heard someone be able to heal and get through trauma by not talking about it and just internalizing everything and keeping it inside.
Alicia Garza:
That's next week on Uprooted for more on Keith Warren's case, check out the mini series on Discovery Plus, and if you love the show, be sure to rate, review and subscribe to uprooted on apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Uprooted is produced by now this for Discovery Plus in partnership with Pod People special, thanks to the production team at Pod People. Rachel King, Matt Sav, Ivana Tucker, Jazzi Johnson, Liz Mak, Brian Rivers, Vincent Cacchione