Shardai: Come on, Trayvon. This one’s just too obvious.
Trayvon: No, no. That’s why I picked it out. It’s not so obvious.
Shardai: Other than the fact that he wrote it on—
Trayvon: Hold up. Hold up. We’ll get to that later. Let’s tackle the witness statement first. You can pretty much throw out the EFIT picture thing, right? I mean, the guy had a balaclava on, right?
Shardai: Yes, I’ll agree that’s a problem.
Trayvon: And you would also agree that visual identification is problematic in and of itself, especially in traumatic situations.
Shardai: Sometimes, yes. I would agree on that too.
Trayvon: But there’s another problem that no one’s really pointed out. (Pause.) Race.
Shardai: What about race?
Trayvon: Leigh Jones is Black.
Shardai: Um … that’s not news, Tray.
Trayvon: Yeah, I know. I know. But the point is, we all know White people are crap at identifying Black people. And vice versa. Cross-racial identification has loads of problems. That’s been well validated, right?
Shardai: Yes, I suppose that’s true.
Trayvon: You suppose? Come on now. We’ve had more than one show where the victim ended up being just plain wrong, have we not? And it cost someone his life. Usually a Black person. Some of them executed, in fact.
Shardai: Sadly, yes. We have.
Trayvon: I’m just saying. Maybe it happened in this case too. To Eric Myers.
Shardai: Yeah, but wait a second, here. We’re not just talking about facial recognition, Tray. We’re talking about something much more obvious than that.
Trayvon: But that’s the thing. How valid is that either? I mean, Leigh Jones was in shock. It’s not her fault. I’m not trying to blame the victim or anything. I’m not saying she’s trying to lie.
Shardai: No, I get that. But how could she have gotten something like that wrong? I mean, she might have been in shock. She might be bad at identifying White folks.
Trayvon: Yeah, yeah. I know what you’re saying.
Shardai: But this piece of evidence is rather distinctive.
Trayvon: True. It is. (Pauses, then laughs.) Aren’t you going to tell them what it is?
Shardai: Oh, Tray. You know we have to have a cliffhanger for the next episode, don’t you?
Trayvon: Indeed, we do.
Shardai: Check us out next week, when we’ll talk about the key piece of evidence that Leigh Jones brought to the police.