J. T. Roane Spitting Back at Law and Order: Donnetta Hill’s Rage in an Era of Vengeance O n June 28, 1990, the family of Nghia Guy Lu, a seventy-two-year-old Vietnamese immigrant living in South Philadelphia, discovered Lu’s body with his pants and underwear around his ankles in the damp base- ment of his home on South Eighth Street between Mifflin and McKean streets. 1 Lu was bludgeoned to death, his skull broken by the blunt force of twelve hammer blows. Nearly a year later, on April 9, 1991, Nairobi DuPont’s father returned from Florida to find his son’s body on their kitchen floor. DuPont, who was twenty-one at the time of his death, had a burn mark across his chest from a teapot also found in the home. Like Lu, he also died from mul- tiple forceful strikes by a hammer to his head. Unlike Lu, however, DuPont succumbed to blows from the clawed back end of the tool, which pierced his scalp and skull. 2 At the time of his murder, DuPont lived three blocks from where Lu had lived and died the year before. 3 At the scene of DuPont’s murder, police claimed to discover a discarded red purse, among its contents the welfare benefits card for another South Philadelphia resident, twenty-five-year-old Donnetta Hill. At the time, Hill lived part time in the seven-hundred block of Daly Street with her mother and two children just around the corner from Lu and DuPont. Given her I appreciate the engagements of dear colleagues Amaka Okechukwu, Nijah Cunningham, and Hannah Grabowski on drafts of this material. I appreciate the assistance of Darrel Young, Court Office Administrator for Philadelphia, in accessing court records. I benefited from the engagements of dear colleagues Amaka Okechukwu, Nijah Cunningham, and Hannah Grabow- ski. I am also indebted to my Fall 2020 Schomburg Fellowship cohort, including our director Brent Hayes Edwards and my colleagues Rebecca Hall, Eve Meltzer, Malachi Crawford, Russell Rickford, Urayoán Noel, Stephanie Crease, Phyllis Ross, and Andrew Anastasi for their genera- tive engagements during our seminar. 1 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Donnetta Hill, Thomas Augustine Hearing Testimony, Trial Transcript (Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas 1992). 2 Ibid. 3 I focus on these two murders in such detail in order to hint at the differences in their ma- teriality. The clawed back end of the tool and the blunt front end do not possess the same phys- ical characteristics, the clawed in sinking slightly into the flesh and into the skull and the dull end bouncing back with the blow. While this does not prove “innocence,” it represents a subtle difference that calls into question state prosecutor’s efforts to condemn Donnetta Hill as a ha- bituated murderer. [Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2021, vol. 46, no. 4] © 2021 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0097-9740/2021/4604-0004$10.00