What case, you ask? The Andrew Coffee IV case? Since you are not likely to have heard of it, I shall explain.
In this case, police executed a drug raid on the home of Andrew Coffee IV back in 2017 – but he was acquitted of murder charges on November 19th of this year.
Coffee was sleeping. With him at home was Coffee’s girlfriend, Alteria Woods. Coffee was awakened to the sound of flash-bang devices. According to his testimony, Coffee said he believed that the flash-bangs were gun fire, so he opened fire on the police.
In the exchange of gunfire, Woods was killed. Since Coffee initiated the gunfire, he was charged with both attempted first degree murder for shooting at police and first-degree murder for indirectly causing the death of Woods. As a previously convicted felon, Coffee was also charged with the illegal possession of a gun.
Coffee mounted a self-defense claim in his trial based on his belief that the police were shooting at him. He was acquitted of both the attempted first-degree murder and the first-degree murder of his girlfriend. He was convicted on the illegal possession of a gun.
Why is this case noteworthy?
It serves to show that the American law system is not systemically weighted against black defendants nearly as much as the race-baiters claim in their specious race card responses and narratives. It goes against the racist narrative that black cannot receive fair trials in regions dominated by white folks – especially Republican and conservative white folks. Oh yeah, Coffee is black.
Coffee was acquitted by a white jury in a very red county in Florida. Two-thirds of the voters in Indian River County voted for President Trump in 2020. By similar margin, they elected Republicans to Congress, the State Senate and the State House.
And yet, a black male being raided on suspicions of serious crimes, initiates gunshots at the police and he successfully pleads self-defense based on the unanimous verdict of a white jury. This case was not nearly as clear cut as was the Rittenhouse case – but the jury still found in favor of Coffee. Minimally, they thought his action was “reasonable.” That makes the Coffee case even more significant in evaluating American justice.
Allow me to say that looking more deeply into the FACTS and EVIDNECE in the Coffee case, I agree with the jury verdict. Rightly or wrongly, Coffee believed that the police were shooting — and he thought that he was returning fire. He had every reason to fear for his life when he started shooting.
So, why did this case not get anything near the level of attention from the national media? Why were the left-wing black activists not protesting during the trial? Where were all those Democrat voices playing the race card? Neither Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton sat in solidarity with the defendant’s family. There were no assemblages of demonstrators outside the courtroom. Why not?
The answer seems clear. This case does not support the left’s narratives that the American justice system is systemically and pervasively racist. It would not be a good moneymaker for the race-baiting industry.
Unfortunately, the left has the advantage of a systemically biased major media to advance its specious narratives. They filter (censor) the news reports along partisan and philosophic lines rather than the news value – as journalistic standards require. Television producers and newspaper editors arbitrarily decided that the public did not need to know of the Coffee case.
Our justice system is not perfect – and never will be. There arguably are situations in which racism plays a role. But they are not necessarily where the media forces our attention – and nowhere as pervasive as the race-baiters would have us believe.
Racism is more likely to be found in the cases of thousands black defendants in the municipal courts in our major cities. And it is not those highly promoted murder cases with political overtones but rather the thousands of cases that flow through those urban courts every day — usually black-on-black — that get absolutely no attention from even the local media.
In my Chicago homeland, folks in the segregated inner city are gunned down on a daily basis and, at best, they are lumped into a tragic statistic in the local news without any names and faces. A modicum of attention may be given by the media when the innocent victim is a child. But that is it. Those are the hidden crimes and racism that Democrat leadership and the politically compromised press sweep under the rug … routinely.
If you want to understand the work of such race-baiters as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, check how many times they mobilized and protested at the doorsteps of the Democrat-controlled city halls in Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles, etc. — where their political allies are engaging in the most racist policies and practices of modern times.
All the attention – and disinformation – surrounding the high visibility criminal cases is not intended to shine light on injustice, but rather to create racially divisive false narratives for political gain. The Coffee cases gives more evidence of that reality.
So, there ‘tis.