Critics call them "dummies" that epitomize racial insensitivity. The prosecutor's office calls them "body form trial displays."

They're three headless plastic torsos hanging from a metal coat rack in a Multnomah County courtroom.

Each one displays the shirt and pants worn by three African American defendants accused in a fatal shooting. Each set of clothes has a photo attached showing the defendants.

Critics say prosecutors shouldn’t be using the display during the ongoing jury trial, given the nation's hateful history of lynchings.

Some have taken to social media after civil rights attorney Juan Chavez tweeted commentary and a photograph of the prop.

“Call me new fashioned, but trying three African American men in the United States while three dummies with each of their pictures and clothes are hanging right next to the jury box all trial seems like bad form,” Chavez wrote.

That has prompted similar responses.

“Disgusting,” tweeted Teressa Raiford, founder of the Don't Shoot PDX movement and a member of Black Lives Matter.

“Why on earth would someone at the DAs office think this was okay?” tweeted Bobbin Singh, executive director of the Oregon Justice Resource Center, a non-profit that advocates for criminal justice reform. “The imagery is too much.”

Singh told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Thursday that the display evokes the imagery of past lynchings and sends a subliminal message to people of color that they're still not as valuable as white people.

“It just demonstrates that there’s so much work to be done,” Singh said. “So much education to be done.”

Prosecutors Glen Banfield and Eric Zimmerman have used the display during the two-week trial of Marcellus Ramon Allen, who faces life in prison with a 25-year minimum if found guilty of murder. Closing arguments in the courtroom of Judge Jerry Hodson are expected Friday.

Allen's two co-defendants -- Tracey Christopher Lomax and Xabian Robert Riley -- will be tried at later dates. In 2014, a jury found all three men guilty in the case, but the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed the convictions, prompting new trials for each.

Banfield, who is African American, said prosecutors needed the courtroom display to show the clothes that each of three defendants allegedly changed into on the night of the May 2012 killing of Kenny Ray Henry Jr. Three witnesses so far have testified about the clothing and have been able to look at and reference the clothing because of the display, Banfield said.

Larry Matasar, a criminal defense attorney not associated with the case, said if that's the case, the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office should start using full-body, free-standing mannequins -- the kind displayed in store windows.

"There are so many other types of mannequins they could have used that don't have this type of racist connotation," Matasar said. "There is no place for this kind of display in the USA, and especially not in an Oregon courtroom, given our terrible racist history."

Kirsten Snowden, a chief deputy district attorney, said her office just learned of the criticism and hasn't had a chance yet to discuss future use of the display and any possible replacement options.

"It is certainly never our intention to be racially insensitive," Snowden said. “If we’re being racially insensitive, we want to know that.”

Snowden said prosecutors in several trials have used the display to show off the clothing of defendants, “irrespective of race or gender.”

She said her office currently doesn't have full-body, free-standing mannequins.

-- Aimee Green