Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dear Martin, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Privilege, Entitlement, and Implicit Bias
Appearances and Assumptions
Support, Acceptance, and Belonging
Opportunity and Upward Mobility
The Media and Public Discourse
Summary
Analysis
In an article with the subtitle, “The Jury Is Still Out,” a journalist reports that the jury found Tison guilty on three of his four charges. “After 27 hours of deliberation, Tison was convicted of two misdemeanors—disorderly conduct and discharge of a pistol near a public highway—and aggravated assault, the less severe of the two felonies,” the journalist writes. “The jury was unable to reach a consensus regarding the felony murder charge, and a mistrial was declared on that count.” The article then suggests that Justyce’s possible “connection to known gang members” “cast a considerable pall over the proceedings in court.” In conclusion, the writer notes that “Mr. Tison will be retried on the murder count and sentenced on all convictions at a later date.”
Although the jury finds Tison guilty on three of his four accusations, it fails to convict him of murder, which is the only charge that truly matters. After all, two of the charges are only misdemeanors, and the “aggravated assault” charge hardly captures the severity of his crime. Given these results, it seems likely that the jury was influenced by Tison’s attorney, who manipulated the facts surrounding Manny’s death by taking certain details out of context and using them to portray both him and Justyce as “thugs.”
Themes
