St. Louis

Quick note regarding the verdict in the latest “Trial of the Day“: Unless you can point to credible reasons to suspect that established procedures weren’t followed, or that there was improper influence involved, jury tampering, bribery, etc, I’m highly unlikely to be following or to give a rip about the “Trial of the Day” that you are so worked up about.

We have a judicial system with established procedures that are designed to test, admit and present evidence and arguments for, and against, the person or persons charged with a crime, and assuming that system was followed and applied, what results from that, is what, in our judicial system, constitutes a ‘fair trial‘.

In our system of justice, the person or persons charged, are considered innocent, in regards to the Law, until proven guilty. That means, that the best possible methods of rendering a Just decision by those who were not there, has been followed, and we cannot justly do any better.

If you want to assert that you didn’t like the verdict, and you want to demand that your biased preferences should take precedence over a system such as ours, then you are advocating for the passion driven, unreasoning, use of force, to appease the sensibilities of the aggrieved and the angry. There is no possibility of Justice in such a system as that, and that approach is nothing but a leap backwards in time, to lynch mobs and barbarity.

If you view a single snippet of a statement, and based upon that alone, judge that “This is Not Justice!“, then what you are demanding, is not justice, but an end to the possibility of Justice, you are advocating savagery, and in that respect: you disgust me.

Period.

As for those taking their unreasoning angst to the streets to forcibly control the lives of others, surrounding cars and their terrified occupants in traffic, stopping highways, blocking the entrances to a major hospital (absolutely jeopardizing lives) and or to intentionally do actual violence to them, I’ll leave you with John Adams’ comments on how to handle rioters:

“…I will not at present, look for any more authorities in the point of self-defence; you will be able to judge from these, how far the law goes, in justifying or excusing any person in defence of himself, or taking away the life of another who threatens him, in life or limb; the next point is this, That in case of an unlawful assembly, all and every one of the assembly is guilty of all and every unlawful act, committed by any one of that assembly, in prosecution of the unlawful design they set out upon.

Rules of law should be universally known, what ever effect they may have on politics; they are rules of common law, the law of the land, and it is certainly true, that where ever there is an unlawful assembly, let it consist of many persons or a few, everyman in it is guilty of every unlawful act committed by any one of the whole party, be they more or be they less, in pursuance of their unlawful design. This is the policy of the law: to discourage and prevent riots, insurrections, turbulence and tumults….”

We can have a Judicial System that seeks justice through reasonable laws, known and fixed methods of justice, or we can permit the mood of the moment to normalize exceptions to our laws whenever popular angst demands it – but we can’t have both.

If We The People fail to hold onto our understanding and regard for our system of justice, if we let the mob have its way ‘sometimes’, what we are inviting is a politically correct mob mentality that will routinely exercise extreme or even deadly violence to get their way, and when that becomes the norm, then, as so often before, we will usher in a Napoleon to resolve the matter.

Trust me – we don’t want to send out that message in a bottle:

Quick note regarding the verdict in the latest “Trial of the Day”: Unless you can point to credible reasons to suspect that established procedures weren’t followed, or that there was improper influence involved, jury tampering, bribery, etc, I’m highly…