Overall, it’s not true that during this decade’s “racial reckoning,” some races are above the law. But there are straws in the wind suggesting a trend…

From San Francisco Public Safety News:

Fam­ily of slain Twin Peaks pho­tog­ra­pher lament jury dead­lock
May 22nd, 2023 at 1:10 PM

A mis­trial was de­clared to­day in the mur­der trial of Fan­tasy De­cuir and La­m­onte Mims in San Fran­cisco Su­pe­rior Court.

The pair were ac­cused of rob­bing and killing pho­tog­ra­pher and film lo­ca­tion scout Ed French, 71, at Twin Peaks over­look in July 2017.

The jury of five men and seven women re­ported they were dead­locked as to a count of first-de­gree mur­der. …

The broad day­light, caught-on-cam­era killing of the de­fense­less se­nior shocked res­i­dents for its sense­less­ness and bru­tal­ity.

The pair will face a re­trial.

Speak­ing out­side De­part­ment 28 to­day the vic­tim’s part­ner Brian Hig­gin­botham lamented the fail­ure of the jury to reach a ver­dict as to De­cuir and Mims.

“They are both guilty of first de­gree mur­der,” he said. “They killed Ed in cold blood and went on al­most to com­mit an­other mur­der less than two weeks later.” …

While they did not dis­pute that their client fired the shot that killed Mr French, de­fense at­tor­neys ar­gued that, at the time of the killing, Ms De­cuir was in a “sickle cell cri­sis” and suf­fer­ing from opi­ate painkiller with­drawal.

They added that Ms De­cuir had a low IQ, a “lack of adap­tive func­tion­ing” and suf­fers from stress and anx­i­ety. As a con­se­quence, they said, she did not act “con­sciously” when fir­ing the gun.

She was “un­aware of what is go­ing on,” at­tor­ney Mark Iver­son told the jury, “She is mov­ing, but with­out con­scious thought.”

Sum­ming-up, pros­e­cu­tor Heather Tre­visan dis­missed claims of lack of con­scious­ness: “mak­ing a plan with some­one else to go to a tar­get-rich en­vi­ron­ment [and] to leave [Mr French] alone to die on the street while you go to fence the cam­era” sug­gested to the con­trary, she said. …

One ju­ror spoke of “per­sonal ten­sion” among those de­lib­er­at­ing.

With re­spect to Mr French’s death, the only guilty ver­dicts aris­ing from the day’s events, that the jury could agree, re­lated to Mims: a sin­gle count of ‘sec­ond de­gree rob­bery’ and a count of ‘con­tempt of court’—be­cause, by be­ing on Twin Peaks, he vi­o­lated a stay-away or­der pre­vi­ously im­posed.

The pair were both found not guilty of ‘in­flict­ing in­jury on an el­der’ as re­gards Mr French. The read­ing of this ver­dict for Ms De­cuir caused a mem­ber of the French fam­ily to im­me­di­ately leave the court­room. …

Six days be­fore the killing, La­m­onte Mims, al­ready on felony pro­ba­tion, was re­leased on bail by Judge Sharon Rear­don af­ter be­ing ar­rested for gun pos­ses­sion and pa­role vi­o­la­tions.

In mak­ing her re­lease de­ci­sion, Judge Rear­don had the ben­e­fit of a risk as­sess­ment pre­pared via an al­go­rithm—how­ever staff at the SF Pre­trial Di­ver­sion Pro­ject said that they mis­tak­enly in­putted in­cor­rect data, re­sult­ing in a ‘re­lease’ rec­om­men­da­tion.