Juries have an important role to play in our system, but they often perform it poorly, mistaking the law, as obviously happened in the Kim Potter trial, and using reasoning which makes one wonder if they were paying much attention during the trial. Of course this is what one should expect from draftees into the legal system, who didn’t ask to be there, who have no training and who suddenly have to make very important decisions. Juries can be an important check on the power of the State, but one should never romanticize them and should only rely upon them as a last resort.
Years ago, on a yellow note pad, I copied a few Latin sentence that I thought represented legal tenets.
Here’s one, “Actus non facit reum, nisi mens sit rea.”
The jury’s decision in the Potter case is rather less egregious than the jury’s decision in the Chauvin case.
Did you catch that Mohammed Noor, who killed a member of the public quite deliberately for no discernable reason, will serve just six years.
The courts and the prosecutor’s offices in the seven counties around Minneapolis are a scandal. So are the attitudes of much of the public therein. Minnesota nice does not exist.
Art, my theory is there must actually be something in the water or the air up there that makes people crazy. Just look at the procession of bizarre political figures to have emerged from Minnesota in our lifetimes. I have heard the term “Nordic liberalism” tossed around a lot, but even the Swedes have not, to my knowledge, elected buffoons like Jesse Ventura and Al Franken to important public offices and then expected to be taken seriously. (Well, okay, Franken stole at least one election, but nobody up there seemed to care.) And extreme leftIes such as Mondale, Humphrey and Wellstone have been standard products of the Minnesota electorate for generations. What a strange place. I hope they all stay there. 😂
Wellstone was an extreme leftist, albeit one with a sanguine temperament which constrained his unpleasantness. Mondale’s was an agreeable man without originality; his political ideas were quite stereotyped. The rap on him was that he was the agent of the Democratic Party’s clanking collection of interest groups. As for Humphrey, he was an amiable advocate of a jumble of notions drawn from the occupational cultures of social workers and labor union meatheads. Humphrey was benign, for the most part. His most disagreeable feature was his economic illiteracy.
The big disappointment about Mondale (and Jimmy Carter, and Michael Dukakis) is that if they had anything to say about the decay of the intramural culture of the Democratic Party, they never uttered it at times and places where someone was likely to notice. Keep in mind that Jonathan Turley, Alan Dershowitz, Glenn Greenwald, and Bari Weiss have been able to make their voices heard.
Until liberal elites and race-hustlers’ begin to hold all persons who resist arrest to the same standard, police should just let black criminals go.
Mindless negligence (and not manslaughter!) no doubt, but the nervousness of knowing you’re white arresting a black probably contributed.
The adverse political comments about Minnesota are well taken because they are responsible for a atmosphere that allows rather strange jury decisions. Despite Judge’s instructions to consider only matters brought up in court, jurors bring their personal baggage with them during deliberations. This greatly contributes to some of the surreal discussions that lead to these decisions.
Despite Judge’s instructions
The judge refused to grant a change of venue and structured jury selection in such a way that every impartial person was excluded from the jury. He’s a criminal.
Trial by jury is the best system for determining guilt that exists. That doesn’t mean that they cannot be infected with the prejudices that exist in the community, as in my opinion, this jury was. Remember, these people elected the racist Keith Ellison as their Attorney General. What people are afraid to say: If Potter was black and the deceased was white, there would have been no trial. Racism is ugly, even when the victim is a white cop.
Did you catch that Mohammed Noor, who killed a member of the public quite deliberately for no discernable reason, will serve just six years.
That was bound to happen. He played the race card.
He leant over his partner and shot her. Unprovoked. Then tried to cover it up when questioned. A completely innocent person who thought she was doing the right thing calling the police.
But apparently if you (a white person) touch a single hair on a (black) criminals head whilst doing your job keeping the public safe, you get thrown behind bars….Figure that one out of you can.