Coleman Hughs: On Derek Chauvin, George Floyd, and Reasonable Doubt

link

My view has stabilized (at least for some time, and for now) at:

(a) Chauvin clearly did not receive a fair trial

and

(b) I suspect he should have been found innocent.

(Though, as I understand it, prosecutors and the DoJ piled on so many charges, and maneuvered him so into a corner on sentencing, that it will be difficult or impossible for him to appeal. Which is evil.)

   Hughes is very good, of course. Balko, as it turns out, is a jackass.

   I tried to read Balko's first essay some time ago, but it was just so nasty, hysterical, dogmatic and annoying that I didn't finish it. It was just making me less receptive to counterarguments. I could tell by the tone that Balko couldn't be trusted. So there was no reason to read it unless I was going to check every assertion. I figured I'd wait until Hughes and Weiss had a chance to reply. The few arguments I did read fairly carefully in Balko's piece were shit. Or, at least, there wasn't enough to them to tell whether there might be something to them, if you get my meaning.

   It's hard to believe what a haphazard, unfair, irrational process a trial can be unless you've been through one. Someone very close to me was, and I was part of it. He was found innocent--the correct verdict--but only as a result of what was basically several accidents, misunderstandings, coin-tosses, and bits of luck. His lawyer turned out to be virtually incompetent, despite having come highly recommended. The police lied, didn't do their jobs (e.g. didn't interview the only independent witness (who then died before the accused even had a real (though incompetent) lawyer), then the cop basically admitted that he lied (i.e. that he had said that the accused said something that he really didn't remember him saying)... It was basically the opposite of what you're led to believe by the teevee...

   I watched part of the Chauvin trial, but not much of it. But what I saw was enough to convince me that justice wasn't necessarily being done. And, as I've said before, the mere fact that there was no change of venue was enough to make me conclude the trial wasn't fair. The courthouse was surrounded by an angry mob...a cityfull of angry mobs...and everyone knew what was going to happen if the jury returned a not guilty verdict... (Not to mention the BLM sympathizers on the jury...)

Anyway.

I have a few quibbles with Hughes's essay, but he's way more in the right than Balko.