BOOKS
A Case Study of Vigilantes
By Carson Guy
Shadow Vigilantes (Prometheus Books, 2018) reprinted with permission by
the publisher.
In their new book, Shadow Vigilantes: How Distrust in the Justice
System Breeds a New Kind of Lawlessness (Prometheus Books, 2018),
Paul and Sarah Robinson address the well-known, but rarely critically
examined, topic of vigilantism.
Paul Robinson, a distinguished law professor and former federal
prosecutor, has ample experience to draw upon in addressing this topic,
and he brings all of it to bear here. He has written extensively about
vigilantism and the criminal justice system, and in this book, he and
Sarah bring those ideas together in one place.
Written from the perspective of an ordinary person, Shadow
Vigilantes discusses the typical vigilantes that most people think
about (picture Batman or John McClane from the cinematic masterpiece
that is Die Hard), but that is not the best part of the
book.
The morality, or lack thereof, underpinning most vigilante action is
complicated. People perceive the actions of some vigilantes to be
morally justified, but not others. On the other hand, some morally
justified vigilante actions, the authors assert, lose the moral high
ground over time, or are replaced. To make things easier to understand,
the Robinsons even include 10 rules to make sure that your vigilante
actions are morally justified.
Throughout Shadow Vigilantes, insightful case studies are
used to bring the academic discussions alive. For example, the Robinsons
talk about the Pink Gang, a vigilante group formed to protect women in
response to widespread domestic abuse in India, and the Deacons of
Defense and Justice, a vigilante group that sought to defend African
Americans exercising their civil rights in the 1960s. The Deacons of
Defense accompanied Martin Luther King Jr. during his March Against Fear
from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi. The authors argue that
the group disbanded, however, because of the rise of a violent vigilante
group—the Black Panthers. These are only two of dozens of case studies
that appear in the book and in the appendix.
Shadow vigilantes, the authors explain, are people who do what they
perceive to be justice by manipulating the criminal justice system to
impose their own version of justice. Often these types of vigilantes
take the form of overzealous police officers or prosecutors who stretch
or break the rules to get a conviction because they know a person is
“good for it”; judges obsessed with procedural rules and legal
technicalities that result in the obviously guilty going free; and
jurors who rely on their personal inclinations when deciding a person’s
guilt or innocence instead of the law. This type of vigilante justice,
the Robinsons argue, is the most insidious form.
The vigilante echo refers to the long-lasting effects that social
injustice can have on the relationship between the government and the
people it governs. Eventually, the Robinsons explain, vigilantism can
lead to a downward spiral into lawlessness as a community’s trust in the
criminal justice system is continually eroded by the government’s
failures to do justice. It is important to note that the authors have
taken a position on these issues. For example, the Robinsons assert that
the current criminal justice system encourages shadow vigilantism by
“adopting rules and practices that regularly produce what are seen as
appalling failures of justice.” One procedural rule repeatedly cited by
the Robinsons is the exclusionary rule, which generally renders evidence
inadmissible when it is obtained by the government in violation of the
Fourth Amendment. There is no question that criminals, some who have
committed heinous crimes, escape justice if evidence of their crimes is
inadmissible, but most lawyers understand the public policy underlying
the rule. And while the exclusionary rule is strong medicine, it should
be noted that there are numerous exceptions to the rule that prevent the
guilty from going unpunished.
These are thorny issues with no clear answer, but Shadow
Vigilantes is an enjoyable read that sheds light on how ordinary
people view the criminal justice system and how the government’s failure
to provide security and justice to the people it governs can change the
social fabric of our society in a negative way.TBJ
CARSON GUY
is a staff
attorney at the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas for Judge Barbara
P. Hervey. He lives in Leander with his wife, Jessica; son, Stratton;
and goldendoodle, Maggie.
