Systems exist and prejudice and racism exists because of how we speak to each other and how we try to identify a whole race of people.” The power of language is what got us here. “We want to say some people are animals and some people are brutes, but the power of language is so important. However, when he tries to hug O’Brien, she turns stiffly away, suggesting that she does not truly believe in his innocence and leaving Steve feeling like a monster.“We need to be careful with how we label people,” Harrison told VICE ahead of the film’s release.
Despite the prosecutor Petrocelli’s aggressive prosecution and active dehumanization of Steve, through the efforts of Steve’s defense attorney Kathy O’Brien, the jury finds Steve not guilty. If anything, Steve seems a victim of Harlem’s violent environment and the story demonstrates the manner in which that endemic violence drags down well-meaning young men like himself, and then turns them into actually violent people through the horrible environment in prison.
In spite of his potential guilt, Steve’s youth and minimal involvement (he was passively roped into it by King) suggest that a felony murder charge is legally sanctioned but entirely unjust. Steve’s probable guilt is reinforced by the fact that the state prosecutor labels him a “ monster” in her opening remarks, and this becomes the way that Steve sees himself throughout the novel, dehumanizing himself. Although Steve’s actual guilt or innocence is never explicitly revealed, his inner narrative and framing of events suggests that he did participate in the robbery in a minimal way, simply walking into the drugstore and back out of it to check for cops, and leaving before King and Bobo Evans went in to commit the actual robbery. He describes his court case-in which his co-defendant is a man he knows from his neighborhood, James King-through personal notes and a screenplay he writes in his journal as the events happen.
Contrasting with the other three people implicated in the robbery, Steve has no criminal history and is a decent and sensitive kid. Steve is a 16-year-old black kid from Harlem charged with felony murder for his involvement in a botched robbery that ended in Mr. Steve Harmon is the narrator and protagonist of the story.
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