Hundreds of attorneys have joined the nationwide protests over unpunished police killings of African Americans. The attorneys, many of them in business attire, staged a die-in outside a Los Angeles courthouse, lying on the ground in the rain for four-and-a-half minutes — one minute for each hour that Michael Brown’s body lay in the street after he was shot dead. Attorney Carmina Ocampo said lawyers have a particular obligation to speak out about the failure to indict officers who killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner.
Carmina Ocampo: “Lawyers have felt anger and grief about what’s been happening, and as legal actors, we feel particular responsibility to call out and condemn the injustices in the criminal system and the racism. So, as people who are sworn to uphold the law — we study the law, we enforce the law, we take oaths to uphold the law — we want to speak out against these practices in the criminal system that are racist and result in the failure to indict police who kill unarmed people.”
In New York City, lawyers plan to stage a die-in at the Brooklyn Criminal Courthouse today, marking five months since the police killing of Garner.