On the 21st, ESPN dropped a bombshell story alleging that top 5 NBA prospect Brandon Miller “provided the handgun used in the murder of Jamea Jonae Harris, according to police”. Like many, I was shocked to hear the news. But I was even more shocked by the public reaction to the story.
The story immediately went viral. The initial reaction from the sports community was largely to assume that Brandon Miller was a violent criminal who needed to be punished.
What the initial reporting and mainstream reaction completely missed, however, is that Brandon Miller is absolutely not a murderer, has not been charged with a crime and is not even suspected of criminal wrongdoing by police. While it is a crime to be an accessory, to aid and abet, or to conspire in the commission of a crime, there is no evidence Brandon Miller is guilty of any of that.
In fact, Brandon Miller, by all accounts, has been fully cooperative with authorities since the incident. He’s made himself available as a cooperating witness for multiple interviews and voluntarily offered to turn the contents of his phone and car over to police. It appears that instead of providing the murder weapon, he was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. That is why Brandon Miller was not charged with a crime by police, was not punished by the University of Alabama and was allowed to play in a basketball game against South Carolina shortly after the story broke.
So how did the basketball community adopt the incorrect belief, basically overnight, that an innocent black college athlete was suspected by police for his involvement in a murder?
One reason is because the criminal justice system is complex. The ESPN tweet about the story and the corresponding reaction by the public show how incomplete headlines can be easily misunderstood by uninformed readers.
There were some true aspects to ESPN’s tweet. Brandon Miller’s friend and former teammate, Darius Miles, along with his friend, Michael Davis, are parties charged with murder. The murder weapon belonging to Darius Miles was in Brandon Miller’s car the night of the killing. And Brandon Miller drove to Darius Miles to return his personal possessions to him that night, which resulted in Darius Miles using his gun to tragically kill an innocent woman.
But importantly, according to Miller’s lawyer, he did not know a gun was one of the items Darius Miles left in his car, and Brandon Miller did not know what Darius Miles intended to do with his gun once he got it that night. Brandon Miller was merely returning his friends’ stuff to him. Miller had no idea that Darius Miles was going to use the gun to commit a crime. Therefore, Miller didn’t possess the intent necessary to be charged with a crime.
The reference to “police” in headlines was also confusing. The headlines didn’t parse out the difference between police testimony and a formal indictment. The reason why the story broke is because a police officer testifying at a preliminary hearing in the murder case against Darius Miles and Michael Davis brought up Brandon Miller. That explains the “provided the handgun” and “according to police” language used in the ESPN tweet, because that is one way to describe the sequence of events as told by the testifying officer.
However, that description unnecessarily portrays Brandon as someone with criminal involvement and should not have been phrased in a way that could result in readers believing that Brandon Miller was accused by police of being an accessory to murder. The officer’s testimony was probably just explaining the events that occurred that night, and not in any way indicating police suspected Brandon Miller of criminal involvement.
Some might still be skeptical at this point, arguing that of course Brandon Miller’s lawyer would portray his client as innocent by telling a one-sided story. But again, the police have not even charged Brandon Miller of a crime. If police had any evidence proving Brandon Miller knew Darius Miles intended to commit a crime with his gun prior to its delivery, Brandon Miller would almost certainly be charged. But no evidence of that exists, which is why Brandon Miller is currently not a defendant in a criminal case and is not at risk of being punished by the legal system or his school.
Some people may still argue that Brandon Miller’s association with his friends, who are accused of killing an innocent woman, is alone sufficient for the condemnation that has come his way. I am sympathetic to this position. Jamea Harris did not deserve to die that night. I feel deep sorrow for her family and friends and cannot imagine the pain and suffering that they must be dealing with. This article in no way seeks to invalidate their emotions. Further, many women have spoken out about the incident, connecting it to the very serious problem of gendered violence that affects women everywhere on a daily basis. It is for these reasons that we have a criminal justice system whereby resources are devoted to finding, arresting, prosecuting, and sentencing those who are guilty of violent crimes. This is why Darius Miles and Michael Davis are on trial.
But why does our perception of Brandon Miller even matter?
But I hope the people who are upset at Brandon Miller can see how his story is part of a larger dynamic within sports, social media, and society that unfortunately results in innocent black men being unjustly punished. The original tweets breaking the story should have been worded in a way that made it clear it was not Brandon Miller who was on trial. But instead, by putting out the headline without informing readers that police had not charged Brandon Miller with a crime or even found any evidence implicating him in a crime, the initial headlines guaranteed that readers would be confused and jump to the wrong conclusions.
What happened with Brandon Miller shows how social media can be dangerously prosecutorial. Sports fans should recognize and combat their prosecutorial instincts given the systems of racialized control inherent in both sports media and the legal system. There are grave costs to wrongly portraying an innocent man as guilty. It risks unfairly tarnishing his reputation, damaging his livelihood, or worse, restricting his freedom through wrongful incarceration.
It’s important to understand how we all play a role. Public suspicion guides police suspicion which could, in some cases, lead to innocent people being arrested. Once someone is in the criminal justice system, a combination of factors including over-criminalization, judicial discretion and jury bias make it possible for an innocent person to be found guilty. If public belief in criminal guilt can be swayed so easily in Brandon Miller’s case, it follows that beliefs could also be swayed in situations where even more is at stake.
And it’s even easier to understand how public opinion could affect an athlete’s reputation and livelihood. If the perception of an NBA prospect is that he’s a violent criminal, it could affect his draft stock and cause him to get picked later in the draft or even not selected at all, costing him millions of dollars and a chance at pursuing his lifelong dreams.
So how did this belief that Brandon Miller committed a crime spread so quickly?
First, the framing of the story was designed in a way to get social media clicks, with quippy one-sentence titles maximized to grab attention.
Outlets have incentives to post catchy headlines and be the first to stories, which can override concerns about representing stories in a fully truthful way. The average person is more likely to click on a headline like, “Star Basketball Player Provided Murder Weapon” than a more nuanced article title like, “Police testimony in the murder case against Darius Miles and Michael Davis explains how Alabama star Brandon Miller, an innocent party not charged with a crime, was remotely connected to the incident.”
And companies know this! They’re businesses with business models that rely on manipulating the subconscious emotions of consumers to get them to care enough to click. And as we’ve seen, this emotional manipulation combined with the ease and speed by which information can spread on the internet and disassociate people from reality feeds into forms of “cancel culture” whereby movements of people coalesce to eliminate individuals from online communities.
Second, consumers of American sports media are used to thinking of players as two-dimensional objects instead of people who deserve basic human rights, which explains why people are not willing to afford athletes a presumption of innocence. At the core of the NBA community, and American sports broadly, exists a dynamic between mostly white owners and mostly white fans seeking to control mostly black athletes who are performing for the audience’s entertainment. The carnival-like nature of professional sports dehumanizes athletes in the eyes of the fans. It’s why fans feel comfortable passionately hating athletes they don’t know personally and without good reason, even though they would never confront the people they actually know in their personal lives with the same level of aggression. It’s why NBA players have fought to create an era of basketball defined by player movement and a new media landscape where players can exercise greater control over the narratives surrounding their careers.
There is an ever-present concern that people watching sports think of the players as icons, figures with names, or pieces on a chessboard, instead of human beings worthy of the same basic human dignities. Everyone should be able to freely enjoy fundamental rights like privacy, autonomy, and a presumption of innocence. But oftentimes athletes aren’t seen as people deserving of basic human decency. And of course this entire system is laid on top of the racism pervasive in American society that has institutionalized the harmful white supremacist belief that black people should be treated differently than and seen as inferior to white people.
Interestingly, the emotional manipulation found on social media and the normalization of racialized dehumanization in sports are also present in politics, and strengthen the prosecutorial arm of the criminal justice system. Political support is drummed up in the same way that social media posts are designed to garner attention. Politicians create catchy headlines to manipulate the emotions of the electorate. The scope of criminal laws, funding for police, and focus of government prosecutors are inherently reliant on the tides of political support from people who are strongly in favor of criminalization as the primary response to social ills.
Specifically when passing crime bills, politicians prey on implicit racial biases by fear mongering about crime spikes in “urban” areas, an infamous dog whistle to those who believe black people are inherently more criminal and in need of punishment. Fearful and otherwise progressive individuals who support “law and order” politicians passing “tough on crime” bills end up contributing to the perpetuation of the American system of mass incarceration that disproportionately imprisons racial minorities. This should be considered an even more pressing issue given continued Republican support of a brand of Trump-ist fascism built on targeting, demonizing, and politically oppressing minority groups.
So how does this all connect back to Brandon Miller? Was this just a mistake that can be easily corrected?
It appears not. The same dynamic played out again when social media posts by sports media members condemned Brandon Miller for performing a walkout gimmick in a pregame lineup that involved a teammate patting him down.
People on social media continued to castigate this teenager who, at worst, made a statement in poor taste in an attempt to reclaim a dangerous and incorrect narrative. Importantly, since the outcry about the walkout, it’s been revealed that this walkout routine was part of Brandon Miller’s pre-game routine long before the murder of Jamea Harris. And this walkout controversy occurred days after the story broke and Brandon Miller’s innocence had been confirmed.
Again, I’m incredibly sympathetic to those who are mourning Jamea Harris, those who have been personally affected by violent crimes, and those who see themselves reflected in Jamea Harris and fear the same fate could befall them. The optics and timing of the walkout routine were bad. The coach of the team has apologized and said it won’t happen again.
But I can’t help but wonder: are people upset because deep down there’s still some part of them that believes he’s guilty of a crime and should be punished accordingly? If so, it shows the same people are likely to make the same mistake over and over again in different situations where the conviction and incarceration of an innocent person could be on the line, adding coal to the engines behind mass incarceration.
And crucially, the more that racialized dehumanization is accepted in society, the easier it gets for politicians to enact violent forms of government repression. Mass incarceration and Trumpist fascism are both examples of political structures built on an underlying accepted belief in society that it’s okay to classify minority groups as an out-group and undeserving of basic human rights.
Sports fans need to understand how the coverage and response to the Brandon Miller story exemplifies how easy it is for well-intentioned people to become violent tools of state oppression. We must carry a presumption of innocence when confronted with stories that portray young athletes as criminals to counteract the structures inherent to the law and sports that can result in well-intentioned people unwittingly strengthening tools of government oppression.
Some more readings on the matter:
The Reedbound 