A black defendant won a new trial because the jury deliberated in a room with a Confederate flag and other symbols.

This illustrates part of how systemic racism operates. The racism of the Confederacy, and the slavery system it fought for, propagates through the actions of its present-day adorers into racist influence on other people.

The retrial will not exactly tell us whether that influence was crucial in the first trial. Partly because the appeal found another error in his first trial: some evidence will not be admitted next time. Partly because it will have a different jury and maybe a different judge. But also because influences like this are not overwhelming. They do not compel a given outcome independent of what the facts justify. Rather, they change tendencies. They may or may not hurt a particular individual on a particular occasion, but overall they make the system more unfair.

The article linked to above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles which give important information about racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the exceptions.