The verdict: guilty on all three counts. How was Derek Chauvin going to get anything
resembling a fair trial? Michelle Malkin had some commentary and here are her closing paragraphs:
Judge Peter Cahill, however,
shrugged off the threats and ruled that the jury doesn't need to be shut off
from media and social media exposure until closing arguments begin next Monday.
Never mind the barricades and barbed wire outside the fortified courthouse.
Never mind the half-billion dollars in damage already done by George Floyd's
vigilantes. Never mind the blaring, front-page stories about shopkeepers preparing
for bloody chaos if the jury doesn't rule the "right" way.
Instead, Cahill nonchalantly
advised the jury to simply avoid the news during the trial. Sure, just ignore
the acrid smell of anarcho-tyranny permeating the air. Take no notice of
wall-to-wall coverage of Gannon's resignation Monday afternoon after he pushed
back against the media. Pay no attention to the journalists raging at police
officials calling out rioters. Tune out the black-clad militants screaming
"All Cops Are Bastards" and "No Justice, No Peace." Pretend
away the pretrial publicity and nightly news jeremiads from racial demagogues
Al Sharpton and Benjamin Crump painting Chauvin as an evildoer on par with Ted
Bundy or Adolf Hitler.
With the media acting as relentless
co-prosecutors and character executioners, the well of fair and impartial
jurors who can weigh evidence without fear of retribution has been irreversibly
poisoned. Like Minneapolis, Brooklyn Center, Portland, Los Angeles, Baltimore,
Detroit, St. Louis, Ferguson, and so many other cities before them, the Fifth
and Sixth Amendment rights to an impartial jury, fair trial and due process
have all gone up in choking flames. This is what the twilight of a once great
and free country looks and smells like.
Her full column is here. Another column on this topic by Roger Kimball appeared
at The Spectator here.
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