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Using injuries of race in child abuse and homicide trials

This paper is based on discourse analysis of trials of African American men accused of murdering their minor children. It demonstrates how the shared background knowledge of police brutality towards racial minorities in the USA was deployed as a defense strategy throughout these trials. Since crimes against children usually involved strong forensic evidence as well as the voluntarily taped confessions by the defendants, it is surprising that the claims of an improperly and forcibly extracted confession would represent an effective legal strategy. Yet the macro‐context of institutional racism in the criminal justice system and the more local context of community relations make the claims of the defendants plausible without putting to question the evidence against them. The questions regarding broader issues of human and legal rights of the defendants as well as the concrete issues of justice for their victims are raised.