Sunday, November 28, 2021

On Justice

I have refrained from commenting on high-profile criminal court cases of late, mainly because I wanted to wait for them to be over, and as two major cases have been decided, I can no longer remain silent on them.

First, the Kyle Rittenhouse case in Wisconsin.  He should have been held responsible for the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, the two men he fatally shot during a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.  Yes, I know he says he supports the Black Lives Matter movement, and the evidence may suggest that he did indeed fire his weapon in self-defense, but what was Rittenhouse doing there in the first place as an armed minor?  He just gave wannabe vigilantes an excuse to go into protests involving progressive activists and discourage them from demonstrating by packing a rod.  Even Bernhard Goetz, the infamous "subway vigilante" who shot teenagers in the New York subway system because he said they were about to rob him, didn't get this much sympathy, and President Ronald Reagan - never a critic of law and order - refused to offer sympathy for him. But Rittenhouse gets to go to Mar-a-Lago for Thanksgiving. 

And in Georgia, where the Ahmaud Arbery murder case was decided?  Travis McMichael, his father Greg McMichael and their neighbor William Bryan are as guilty as sin and deserved to be so found.  They overreacted because of the sight of a black man - a black man - jogging through their neighborhood because they thought he was a robber?  He resembled someone else?  What, are the McMichaels and Bryan suggesting that black people all look the same?  Hardly a justification for shooting someone.  Arbery was hunted down by the defendants and shot to death in an attempt at a "citizen's arrest" in which the arresting citizens shot first and asked questions rarely.  Fortunately, Georgia's citizen's arrest law has since been repealed.  The defendants say that they will appeal the decision, but I don't see that going anywhere.
While the Rittenhouse case shows that the judicial system in this country isn't perfect - hey, consider the judge who oversaw the trial - the murder case in Georgia shows that the system can and does still work. 

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