My brother in law recently retired as a litigator for a major Twin Cities Hospital. He tried over 100 cases and never lost. He has provided us with excellent insights into the Chauvin trial as he has known most of the lawyers and judges.
On Sunday, I asked him how he would handicap the verdict. He said, “Oh, I think he will be convicted. The question is, which charge?”
A young woman who knows my youngest daughter was there also. She said, “I think he will acquitted and this city will melt down.”
A couple of things here. First, it was interesting that this young woman didn’t think, hmmm, I am sitting here with a guy who litigated in MN courts for 40 years. Maybe I should hesitate a bit before just assuming he is wrong. Well, of course, young people are like that.
But I share this story because it seems to me very significant on a lot of levels. Annie (we’ll use that name) spoke out of a profound level of experience shared by most of her generation. They have come into consciousness at a time when the true horrors of American racism were laid bare. And their experiences of government’s responses have not been good. Mass shootings. Cops killing Black people. The Creep’s administration. Unequal treatment for demonstrators on the Left and the Right. Here in MN, we like to think of ourselves as progressive and virtuous, but the racism is coming out here too and we couldn’t even get through the trial before another black man was killed by a cop. Annie has good reason to expect horrors.
So what does this verdict mean? It doesn’t bring George Floyd back. But it’s pretty damn important nonetheless. Contrary to so much of what we have been going through, it is a major instance of the Rule of Law doing what it is supposed to do.
That is crucial for the initiatives to change toxic cop culture. Cops have for many decades—centuries?—operated with an assurance that they could do what they wanted to “perps” without fear of consequences. The cop brother/sisterhood would stand by them and no jury would convict them. Now, in a case the world has been watching, a cop went down. The mantle of invincibility has been shredded.
But it’s crucial, too, for US. Young and old. We desperately needed reassurance that the Rule of Law remains in force and can be made to work.
You know, I am repeatedly struck by the impatience and instinct on our side away from due process. I don’t know how many times I have read a post or comment that fulminated against the inconvenience of process. The Creep’s time of malfeasance in office. Prosecution after January 6. The Chauvin trial.
Hey, we are ALL disgusted and appalled. But so often I see people angrily, impatiently demanding immediate action. It’s so obvious he is guilty. Why is this taking so long? He needs to be punished NOW! The Insurrectionists needed to be in jail by January 7th!
But, see, due process is on our side. The MN prosecutors did a methodical, meticulous job and nailed the sonovabitch. It took time, but it convicted him and left him virtually no excuse for an appeal.
I want it this way. I am NOT on the side of instant condemnation and judgment based on passions. I do NOT want to be part of a lynch mob. And that is the only alternative to taking the time to get the prosecution right.
Our side is the side that cares about justice, about the protection of the vote for everyone, about disposing of a creep in the Oval Office by legal means, not an insurrection.
Of course, due process often enough lets us down. We’ve seen that again and again. Due process fails to deliver justice more often than it succeeds. So I certainly get the frustration and the desired to burn it down in the name of those who suffer.
I share the disgust and the frustration. But I know that the way forward lies through taking the time to build, not through mob anger. We may or may not succeed in asserting the protection of law for Black people in America. But I know that they will find no justice without the law.
And today my fellow Minnesotans set a crucial precedent. The law CAN WORK. Let’s bend our efforts to build it up so it can do its job.
I am not a fan of Sir Thomas Moore. But some lines from A Man for All Seasons always resonate in my mind. I’ll end with them.
Roper: That man's bad!
Moore: There's no law against that.
Roper: God's law!
Moore: Then God can arrest him.
Roper: While you talk, he's gone!
Moore: Go he should, if he were the Devil, until he broke the law.
Roper: Now you give the Devil benefit of law!
Moore: Yes, what would you do? Cut a road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: Yes. I'd cut down every law in England to do that.
Moore: And when the last law was down ,and the Devil turned on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?
This country is planted with laws from coast to coast... Man's laws, not God's, and if you cut them down... and you're just the man to do it... do you really think you could stand upright in the wind that would blow then?