Indifference or Compassion? - Tara Mulay
One of the truths that our dharma practice reveals to us is the truth of conditionality, a truth that has strongly influenced the unfolding of the jury instruction and closing argument phases of the Chauvin trial. The truth of conditionality tells us that all things that arise in our experience, including our reactions to events and decisions, are based on conditions, which are the previous experiences we have had and our reactions to them. These conditions influence our day-to-day perceptions and habits of heart and mind. As we receive racial messages from society that are based on greed, hatred, and delusion, we become conditioned to perceive race habitually. In contrast, wholesome states of mind, including compassion, condition our minds towards harmlessness and care. This state of mind of compassion, and an effort to bring it to bear more in the criminal justice system, played a surprising role in the closing arguments today.
In fact, the backdrop of this trial has always been the anti-black and white supremacist conditioning that has made it extremely difficult to prosecute white police officers who kill, abuse, or torture African-Americans. The question then is whether enough of those conditions can be shifted, and particularly whether the prosecution in this case can make a shift, in order to overcome the conditioning that has caused this ongoing injustice.
During the closing argument phase today, the prosecution used language tied to, and in contrast to, the jury instructions in an effort to challenge perceptions that devalue Black lives and that reinforce notions of policing that endanger Black lives. The prosecutor argued that Chauvin had a mind-state of “indifference,” contrasted with the mind-state of “compassion” he should have had. The reference to “indifference” was to language in the instruction for third-degree murder, which requires that the prosecution prove that Chauvin acted with “a conscious indifference to the loss of life.”
The prosecution argued that all Chauvin needed to do was have “a little compassion” for George Floyd, and showed a clip of Chauvin’s non-response to the fact that another officer could not find a pulse to argue that what occurred was indifference, not compassion. The prosecutor also argued that Chauvin chose “ego” and “pride over policing.”
This begs the question whether American policing currently incorporates any value of “compassion” towards African-Americans before, during, or after police detention, that should prevail over ego or pride of police officers? The prosecutor in this case certainly was trying to shift the narrative in the direction of compassion. It is notable that the prosecutor used this word of “compassion,” and did not only stick to the precise language of the police policy for protecting “the sanctity of life.” Whether the compassion-based argument will work, and what conviction the prosecution might be able to obtain, will signal to us whether we have moved, even slightly, towards realizing a value of care for all human life, regardless of race, in the criminal justice system.
In contrast to the prosecutor, Chauvin’s attorney avoided the use of the word “indifference” and focused on Chauvin’s right as an officer to use “lawful force” as outlined in the instructions. The defense repeatedly argued for a consideration of “the totality of the facts and circumstances,” since, if Chauvin acted as a reasonable police officer in using force under the totality of the circumstances, the force was lawful. Notably absent in the defense attorney’s description of the totality of the circumstances was any need to bring compassion to bear when George Floyd suffered from claustrophobia in the police car, and when he was in a prone, smothering position under Chuavin’s knee and the other officers’ restraint. The defense attorney obviously did not and could not use any overtly racist language. But his emphasis on the broad standard of totality of the circumstances allowed him space to interpose into the deliberations the influence of racist conditioning, which is already in the minds of American jurors, about the threats African-American men pose.
The language each side used in the trial shows that core issues of harmlessness and care for all beings, and the ability to which we can move further towards a society based on these values, are at issue in this trial. Of course, for Buddhists the effort to bring compassion, rather than indifference, to bear throughout all of our lives is of primary importance. These words “compassion” and “indifference” are central to our understanding as Buddhists of what are unwholesome and wholesome states of mind. Compassion (Karuna in Pali) is a Brahmavihara, or divine abode, and indifference is a “near enemy” or opposite of another Brahmavihara, equanimity (Uppekha in Pali). And as Buddhists, our efforts to cultivate compassion and true equanimity, which includes non-greed and non-hatred, remain at the forefront regardless of how the trial unfolds.