Newsmax host Greg Kelly argued on Monday that a jury might not always be right as he tries to discredit Donald Trump’s guilty verdict in New York by comparing it to Emmett Till’s murderers walking free.
In August 1955, Emmett,14, was beaten and shot to death after he allegedly whistled at a white woman. An all-white jury acquitted Emmett’s murderers.
On Monday, Kelly argued that juries sometimes make the wrong decision, equating the Manhattan jury that convicted Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records to pay hush money to a porn star, to an all white male jury in the 1950s Jim Crow south acquitting two of their own for murdering a Black boy
“A jury did it. A jury, a jury, a jury. That’s a jury of [Trump’s] peers. Number one, he doesn’t have any peers. He’s a former president. It is a unique position,” Kelly said, according to media watchdog group Media Matters. “But you notice, like, you know, a jury of his peers, a jury did it, a jury did it. I’ve heard that excuse before.”
“Emmett Till, young man, beaten to death all the way back in the 1950s,” Kelly continued. “What did he do? He said hello to a white woman, something like that. And an all-white mob beat him to death…And the jury said, “went’ don’t see no problem here’ and let him go. A jury of the accusers’ peers found nothing to see here. So jury, I’m told, gets it wrong sometimes.”
