We join Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s structural theory of the racialized U.S. social system with a situational methodology developed by Arthur L. Stinchcombe and Irving Goffman to analyze how law works as a mechanism that connects formal legal equality with legal cynicism. The data for this analysis come from the trial of a Chicago police detective, Jon Burge, who as leader of an infamous torture squad escaped criminal charges for more than thirty years. Burge was finally charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, charges that obscured and perpetuated the larger structural reality of a code of silence that enabled racist torture of more than a hundred Black men. This case study demonstrates how the non-transparency of courtroom sidebars plays an important role in perpetuating systemic features of American criminal injustice: a code of silence, racist discrimination, and legal cynicism.

我们将 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva 的美国种族化社会制度的结构理论与由 Arthur L. Stinchcombe 和 Irving Goffman 开发的情境方法结合起来，分析法律如何作为将正式法律平等与法律犬儒主义联系起来的机制。此分析的数据来自对芝加哥警探 Jon Burge 的审判，他作为臭名昭著的刑讯逼供小组的负责人逃脱了 30 多年的刑事指控。伯奇最终被指控作伪证和妨碍司法公正，这些指控掩盖并延续了沉默准则的更大结构现实，使一百多名黑人遭受种族主义酷刑。本案例研究展示了法庭侧边栏的不透明如何在使美国刑事不公正的系统特征永久化方面发挥重要作用：沉默守则，