Justice American Style

One of the crowning jewels of American Society is its judicial system.

BULLSHIT

The American Judicial system is for sale to the highest bidder or most influential special interest group. By influential, I mean the group with the greatest number of votes in their pocket. I am going to emphasize two widely publicized criminal trials that I happened to watch due to medical recuperation and retirement. I will attempt to make the case that politics was the predominant factor in each trial, one successful and the other unsuccessful at attaining the desired political result. In both cases, the defendant’s bank account was the deciding factor.

The two types of political theorists are the purists and the rational. The purists believe the ‘system’ is nearly fool proof and only a few more laws will make the process of adjudication perfect. The rational realize that no matter how much the written law is improved a human element is involved.

An unbiased source of information will attempt to tell the story without bias for either the prosecution or defense.

I wish to illustrate my point with two very high profile trials. I suspect that if you know the facts you will agree with my opinions.

Similarities

The similarities between the trials are a high profile defendant and victim, a concerted effort to find the defendant guilty, a lot of pretrial publicity, saturated television coverage and potential creation of a political advantage. The possibility of community or even national unrest due to the verdict was a possible outcome of the trial. The state is invested maximum monetary and personnel assets into getting a conviction in both trials.

Differences

In one case, the defendant was rich black man by my standards while the other defendant was a public servant whom worked two jobs just to make ends meet. In one trial, the public was satisfied with the verdict while in the other the public was dissatisfied with the verdict.

 

 

 

OJ Simpson	Derek Chauvin
Similarities
Maximum effort by state	Maximum effort by state
Extensive pretrial publicity	Extensive pretrial publicity
Extensive TV coverage	Extensive TV coverage
Possibility of unrest due to verdict	Possibility of unrest due to verdict
Differences
High profile defendant	High profile victim
Public dissatisfaction with verdict	Public satisfaction with verdict
Black defendant	White defendant
DNA evidence	Video evidence
Inept prosecutors	Effective prosecutors
Effective defense	Overwhelmed defense
Read about the OJ Simpson trial.	Read about the Derek Chauvin trial.

The OJ Simpson trial was televised for nearly nine months in the mid-1990s and involved accusations of him killing his wife and a visitor.

I have a description of each trial as well as my personal observations. In both cases, I changed my opinion as I watched the trial. I thought OJ Simpson was guilty of murder but found myself unconvinced at trial’s end. I though Derek Chauvin was guilty of murder and found myself convinced that Mr. Chauvin was guilty of manslaughter at most and probably innocent at the end.

I am a white baby boomer. My personal political opinions make me a foreign affairs conservative and domestic liberal. I am a liberal because I believe individual liberty. Modern liberals believe in the government’s liberty to suppress the individual’s liberty. I believe monopolies should be discouraged, especially if government chartered. I believe that all individuals have equal rights despite skin color, ethnicity, religion or any other characteristics. If the welfare of the man and the community are different, there is a big problem. I believe that individuals have a responsibility to resist corruption, especially aristocracy – note that this includes politicians with too much power. I believe in state’s rights.