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37 U. Haw. L. Rev. 339 (2015)
Police Shooting of Black Men and Implicit Racial Bias: Can't We All Just Get Along

handle is hein.journals/uhawlr37 and id is 353 raw text is: Police Shootings Of Black Men and Implicit Racial Bias: Can't We All Just Get Along Kenneth Lawson* I. INTRODUCTION I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids-and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination-indeed, everything and anything except me. - Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man In 2013, the nation witnessed the trial and acquittal of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed an unarmed Black teenager named Trayvon Martin.2 Then in 2014, there was extensive media coverage of Ken Lawson, an Associate Faculty Specialist at the University of Hawai'i William S. Richardson Law School, teaches Criminal Procedure, Criminal Law, Professional Responsibility, Evidence, and the Business of Law Practice. He had a successful law practice in Cincinnati, Ohio, until his license to practice law was revoked because of misconduct while addicted to prescription painkillers. He pled guilty to the felony of obtaining controlled substances by fraudulent means and served ten months in federal penitentiary. Mr. Lawson is now active in the Hawai'i Attorneys and Judges Assistance Program. From 1989 to 2007 Lawson litigated numerous murder, civil rights, and police misconduct cases in both federal and state courts and had an active appellate practice. His high-profile clientele included NFL star Elbert Ickey Woods, NFL star and professional baseball player Deion Sanders, and entertainer Peter Frampton. Lawson also represented many everyday people, including a single mother whose sixteen-year-old juvenile son, incarcerated in an Ohio prison for adults, had died after being stabbed sixteen times by the leader of a racist hate group, the Aryan Nation. Approximately one fourth of Ken's cases were done pro bono. Since moving to Hawai'i with his family in 2008, Ken has made hundreds of presentations, including the judiciary's juvenile drug court program, training programs for prosecutors, the government lawyers section of the bar, the Hawai'i Supreme Court's mandatory professionalism program, the Hawaii State Bar Association annual convention, disciplinary board of the Hawai'i Supreme Court, local law firms of all sizes, and numerous community groups. Ken was selected by the Law School's Class of 2014 to deliver the graduation address. I RALPH ELLISON, INVISIBLE MAN 3 (Vintage Books, 2nd ed. 1995). 2 Greg Botelho & Holly Yan, George Zimmerman Found Not Guilty in Trayvon

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