Weapons of Mass Deception and The Verdict

 

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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