Trial 4: A Story Not Just About Race, But Class Solidarity

Share this:

[Spoilers for the Netflix series Trial 4]

This weekend I binged the new Netflix documentary series Trial 4, which I just happened to stumble across during one of my first trips to Netflix in a while. Netflix usually does a great job on documentaries, particularly ones in the “true crime” genre, so even though it was 8 episodes (about 8 hours), I decided to give it a shot, since the story seemed interesting. And it did not disappoint. What I loved about it is that it’s not just a story about race, but about class solidarity.

[Once again, SPOILER WARNING]: Trial 4 is the story of Sean Ellis, a black man from Boston who was wrongly convicted for the murder of a Boston police officer named John Mulligan in 1993. The whole thing seemed fishy from the start: while he and his cousin were at the scene (a Walgreens) somewhat around the time of the murder to buy diapers, the timing doesn’t add up, and the way Mulligan was shot (five times in the face) would barely be possible unless the person was inside the car with him. But because it was such a high-profile case, there was immense public pressure at the time to find a culprit and put them away, so the moment they realized they had an opportunity with Ellis (who was being questioned about the murder of his two female cousins, which he also had nothing to do with), they ran with it. Ellis went to prison in his early 20s and was in for almost 22 years.

The documentary follows Ellis and his lawyer, the incredible Rosemary Scapicchio, through the years-long slog to appeal and eventually dismiss this awful, wrongful, racist conviction nearly 25 years after the fact. As the story unfolds, it is revealed that Mulligan was likely part of a group of three corrupt (or “dirty”) cops who were involved in illegal, phony drug busts, the other two of whom were in charge of the investigation of Mulligan’s murder. It is hard to deny that, even if you are not convinced that this doesn’t mean Ellis is guilty, the investigation itself is highly suspect. This is further proven by the fact that it took 3 trials to convict Ellis, after the first 2 resulted in hung juries. Hence the title Trial 4, which documents the preparation for a possible 4th trial after a judge was convinced to overturn the conviction and order a new trial due to the likely tainted investigation.

In late 2018, soon after the more progressive District Attorney Rachael Rollins was elected but just before she took office, the interim DA decided to dismiss the charges against Ellis rather than going ahead with a 4th trial, which would almost certainly expose the corruption within the department. Even in dismissing the charges though, no one in power would admit Ellis’s innocence. So while Ellis’s being free was a joyful occasion, the fact that even that joy couldn’t be pure after all he’s been through is completely infuriating, not just for him of course, but for any viewer as invested as I was in his story. Ellis will be able to live at least a semi-regular life now, but I wonder if he feels that he will still have to keep looking over his shoulder, since there will still be many who believe he is a cop killer.

While this very well-done documentary is of course about racism and corruption in our justice and law enforcement system, a system that was expressly designed for the protection of the white and powerful and oppression of the poor and non-white, it is also about class. Towards the end of the documentary, when Ellis is speaking at an Innocence Project event and gives credit to all the women who helped him reach this moment–his lawyer Scapicchio, his mother Mary, and his “godmother” of sorts Elaine Murphy (the white mother of a schoolmate from when Ellis was bussed to school in a nicer area for a better opportunity)–he ties together the class solidarity that helped him make it through the many years of hardship and obstacles. He knows just how fortunate he is to be free today, and his dedicating his life so that the many others tragically in his situation can also achieve their freedom.

Rosemary Scapicchio is a white, middle-aged woman who grew up in a large Irish-Catholic family with a single mother in the Brighton projects. Much like Sean, she knew poverty and struggle growing up, and was able to work her way through college and eventually law school. She explains in the documentary that her background led her to wanting to defend people from similar circumstances, which you can see in her tireless defense of Ellis against clear corruption. In a powerful scene at a dinner table with her family, even her own mother is outraged at the clear injustice against Ellis.

This is such an important example of class solidarity which we need so much more of in all aspects of American life. So much of my focus in my reading and writing is on the intersection of race and class, particularly the long history of the pitting of poor white and black Americans against each other to distract them from the white, privileged elites robbing them all. Scapicchio knows she is going against the police system in Boston, which has historically been run by Irish-Americans, but she does it with pride because she knows the system has wronged this man simply because he is black.

At the same time, Elaine Murphy comes from a completely different world than Ellis. She lives in an upper-middle-class suburb of Boston and appears to be well off. This could have easily been a story she barely read when it was in the papers and on the news, or worse, she could have made the snap judgement that Ellis was guilty, as some ex-cops who are featured in the documentary did. Instead, because she had known Ellis since he was a kid and knew he was a kind soul, despite whatever trouble he may have gotten into as a teenager, she became dedicated to doing whatever she could to prove his innocence. I saw just how dedicated she was by hearing how much she visited Ellis while he was in prison–no one visits prison for fun. She also did a lot of work in helping Scapicchio to go through the mountain of files that took years to get that helped expose Mulligan (and the others) for the dirty cops they were. She was as much part of Ellis’s freedom as Scapicchio, and she remained with him for every single hearing and meeting until he finally got the freedom he deserved.

In my life I’ve done my best to learn as much as I can about this country’s history, particularly with racism and how it treats black people as a legacy of slavery. James Baldwin is one of my favorite writers who writes extensively on this. But this year, particularly in the wake of the George Floyd murder protests, I’ve done a lot of thinking and realizing about how the hardest part about fighting against racism is the idea of de-centering whiteness. Because most white people (myself included) were taught, as anti-racist educator Jane Elliott explains, not to “see” color and that everyone “should” be treated fairly, we are then encouraged to believe that everyone already is, denying the cold hard reality of our history and present day. This in the end just furthers the status quo of white dominance and everyone else as “minorities.” This is also true in how we look at those who are poor or in the working class.

What happened to Sean Ellis and countless others who sit behind bars today is a result of this system that’s not “broken”, but working exactly as intended. Ellis, who is now an advocate for criminal justice reform, learned this through his many years in the system. In the team of Ellis’s mother, Scapicchio and Murphy, you couldn’t ask for better solidarity between race and class. I am so happy that this story has a (mostly) happy ending due to this devoted team, and hope Sean Ellis continues to do well in the life he deserved all along.

You can learn more about Sean Ellis’s story by watching Trial 4 and also at Elaine Murphy’s website.

(Note: I am an Amazon Affiliate member, so I receive a small commission from any products purchased from my links, at no extra cost to you. Thank you!)