50% Of Public Agrees With Trump Verdict (30% Don't)

 

The charts above are from a YouGov Poll done on May 30th of a nationwide sample of 3,040 adults.

Most Think Trump Is Guilty In His New York Trial

The charts above are from the CBS News / YouGov Poll - done between May 14th and 21st of a nationwide sample of 1,402 adults, with a 4.4 point margin of error.

48% Say Trump Should Be Convicted In "Hush Money" Trial

 

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between May 12th and 14th of a nationwide sample of 1,830 adults (including 1,586 registered voters). The margin of error is 2.9 points for both groups.

The Trump Jury

 

64% Of Voters Say Trump's Manhattan Trial Is Serious

 

The chart above reflects the results of a new Reuters / Ipsos Poll -- done between April 4th and 8th of a nationwide sample of 833 registered voters, with a 4 point margin of error.

Trump's Manhattan Trial Is More Serious Than Many Think

 

I am a little irritated by a lot of the media coverage about Trump's trial in Manhattan, which is set to start in just a few days. It is commonly referred to as the "hush money to a porn star" case, making it seem as though it's not a very serious matter. But it is far more serious than that.

And Donald Trump knows it is a serious matter. That's why he has tried so hard to get it dismissed or delayed.

It started when Trump paid off a porn star (Stormy Daniels) to keep quiet about their sexual encounter. Paying her off would not be a crime. But he tried to hide the payoff by making numerous small payments to his attorney (to reimburse him for making the payoff). Hiding the payoff in this way was business fraud.

Hiding the payoff in this way would normally be a misdemeanor, but it became a felony because the intent was to cover another crime (election fraud). Trying to cover election fraud made each of the payments a felony - 34 in all.

Each count could carry a 4 year prison sentence, and if made consecutive could total as much as 136 years in prison. It is doubtful he would get a long prison sentence. More like, he would get probation (because he has not been convicted of a previous criminal act, and he is a rich man running for president). 

But even a guilty verdict resulting in probation would make him a convicted criminal.

And being a convicted criminal could seriously affect his chances to be elected president.

This is a serious matter, and Trump knows it (even if many in the public don't).

Most Think Trump's Trials Should Be Before The Election

 

The chart above reflects the results of the CNN / SSRS Poll -- done between January 25th and 30th of a nationwide sample of 1,212 adults, with a 3.4 point margin of error.

Most Want A Trump Verdict Before The Next Election

 

The chart above reflects the result of a CNN / SSRS Poll -- done between January 25th and 30th of a nationwide sample of 1,212 adults, with a 3.4 point margin of error.

Dan Rather On The Dangers Of Trump's Extralegal Actions

The following post is by Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner: 

When Donald Trump turned himself in for booking (and a mugshot and fingerprinting) in Atlanta, Georgia, for charges related to a conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election, it marked the latest chapter in a legal drama that has engulfed him and will shape the future of the nation in unknowable ways.

 

We — as a country, as a people — have never seen anything like this. But for all that is unprecedented in a former president (and current candidate for the office) facing dozens of federal and state criminal charges, there is also a lot that is familiar about the spinning wheels of justice. 

The law is, by definition, governed by rules that dictate how those involved are permitted to act: prosecutors, law enforcement agencies, judges, defendants and their counsel, and so on. There are rules for evidence, rules for testimony, and rules for juries. There is a well-trodden process for booking defendants, setting trial dates, hearing pre-trial motions, and the trial itself. 

Our courts are ideally places of rationality and decorum, where justice is free from intimidation and administered without bias. Of course, the judicial process is ultimately an exercise performed by human beings and thus shaped by our inherent frailties and shortcomings. The rules are intended to limit the outside forces of prejudice, terror, and street justice from influencing the workings of the court. And yet that sometimes proves impossible. 

As the trials of Donald Trump unfold, it will be vital that the nation keeps its eyes on both the action taking place inside the courtroom and that outside it. Because even while Trump’s lawyers will be presenting legal arguments before judges and juries, you can bet the former president will be seeking to defend himself in ways that lie far outside the traditional boundaries of our legal system. He’s done this his entire life, especially during his time as president and after his defeat in 2020.

 

In the wake of that election, Trump’s lawyers pursued all possible legal avenues to challenge its result, and they lost, everywhere. But at the same time, Trump was summoning his supporters to steal the election. It is for these actions — phone calls, tweets, and exhorting the mob directly on January 6 — that he finds himself indicted in both federal and state court. Trump was eager to use whatever means he could — legal or otherwise — to destroy America’s constitutional order. To what lengths will he go when trying to keep himself out of prison?

 

As president, Trump always used speeches, interviews, phone calls (like the one pressuring Ukraine), and social media to whip up passions and serve his naked self-interest. He has shown no compunctions about embracing bullying, divisiveness, intimidation, lying, and even the threat of violence. This has long been the playbook of autocrats. But it has also been the approach of mobsters seeking to avoid the reach of the law. 

It is portentous that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is using the RICO law to go after Trump and his co-defendants in their alleged plot to steal the election in Georgia. This has been a favorite approach of prosecutors to bring mafia kingpins to justice. In essence, Willis is saying that Trump’s election team had a lot in common with other kinds of criminal enterprises. 

With this context in mind, we should consider the long and sordid history of crime figures and extremist political groups eschewing traditional legal defenses in favor of “extralegal” ones: intimidating witnesses, spreading lies to pollute the jury pool, and even resorting to violence against those seeking to hold them accountable. We have already seen credible threats against judges and others involved in the Trump case. And that leads to an important question: How much of this turmoil has been encouraged by Trump’s defiant and antagonistic lie-filled rhetoric?

With most criminal defendants, judges can threaten punishment like fines or jail time for the kinds of things Trump regularly says about law enforcement, members of the court, and witnesses. But in Trump’s case, they have to tread with care lest they turn him into even more of a martyr — a role he is eager to play. And there are also legitimate First Amendment considerations for a leading candidate for president. In his case, the legal and the political are inextricably intertwined. 

Trump knows this and will eagerly push the boundaries of what he can get away with. He also knows he will almost assuredly have the backing of the Republican Party no matter what he does. Just look at all those who raised their hands on the debate stage to say they will support him as their party’s nominee even if he is convicted. It’s craven. And it’s dangerous. 

Violence against the rule of law and violence against a peaceful political process are two sides of the same coin. They have combined at some of the most dire moments in the history of our nation. In a recent column in The New York Times, Anthony Michael Kreis, assistant professor of law at Georgia State University, noted the historical context of Reconstruction after the Civil War — including in Georgia — for Trump’s fourth indictment. 

The democratic failures of that era shared three common attributes. The political process was neither free nor fair, as citizens were prevented from voting and lawful votes were discounted. The Southern Redeemers refused to recognize their opponents as legitimate electoral players. And conservatives abandoned the rule of law, engaging in intimidation and political violence to extinguish the power of multiracial political coalitions.

At bottom, the theory behind the Fulton County indictment accuses Mr. Trump and his allies of some of these same offenses.

Kreis succinctly states: 

When authoritarians attack democracy and lawbreakers are allowed to walk away from those attacks with impunity, they will try again, believing there are no repercussions.

We should not make those mistakes again.

As we reckon with the uncertainty and the peril of our moment, we can recall the words of James “Jem” Coughlin in the Irish mob film “The Town.” Says Jem, “If we get jammed up, we’re holding court in the street.” Trump already showed us he feels the same way. 

Trump has a long history of winning court cases through bullying and the use of extralegal techniques. The least we can do is to be alert for them, recognize them for what they are, and stay determined that the verdict on him — whatever it may be — will be decided inside courtrooms, not by a power play outside them.

In a democratic republic, governed by the rule of law, we cannot allow extralegal methods, for anyone. And least of all for a would-be autocrat desperate to return to power and escape accountability for his actions. 

71% Say It Will Be Hard To Get An Unbiased Jury For Trump

The charts above are from an Ipsos Poll -- done between July 7th and 17th of a nationwide sample of 1,017 adults, with a 3.2 point margin of error.

About 71% are not confident an unbiased jury can be seated for Donald Trump's trial -- and 54% say they would not want to be on such a jury.

Most Want A Trump Trial Before The Next Election

 

The charts above are from the Politico / Ipsos Poll -- done between August 18th and 21st of a nationwide sample of 1,032 adults, with a 3.2 point margin of error.

Trump's Defense Seems To Be That He Is An Idiot

The following post is by Michael A. Cohen at MSNBC.com:

For those who have closely followed the political rise of Donald Trump, it’s rather obvious that the former president isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. This is a man, after all, who once mused about spraying disinfectant or ultraviolet light inside the body to kill the Covid-19 virus, looked directly at the sun during a solar eclipse without protecting his eyes and said Hurricane Florence was “one of the wettest we’ve ever seen, from the standpoint of water.”

But in the wake of his third criminal indictment in four months, it appears that even Trump’s criminal defense team is essentially arguing that their client is an idiot.

Consider the comments of Trump’s lawyer John Lauro, who said Sunday that his client’s defense “is quite simple. Donald Trump … believed in his heart of hearts that he had won that election.”

I don’t doubt that Trump believed he won the 2020 election or that he repeated the lie so many times that it became his reality, but that’s not a defense — it’s a cry for help.

And in Trump’s case, arguing that he believed he won suggests that he also lives in a fantasy world. Last week’s federal indictment says Trump’s closest aides told him repeatedly that he lost the 2020 election. Every conspiracy theory whispered in this ear by Sidney Powell and the My Pillow guy proved hollow, and every legal challenge failed in court. There’s never been a shred of evidence backing up Trump’s “beliefs.”

More than 2½ years later, only the most deluded Americans believe in their heart of hearts that Trump won re-election, but Lauro's argument is it that that group includes the man most likely to be the GOP’s presidential standard-bearer in 2024. 

The only way this defense could work is if, like Trump, the judge and members of the jury are also two sandwiches shy of a picnic.

In his bizarre statements over the weekend, Lauro didn’t limit himself to positing what Trump believes in his heart. He also claimed that when Trump asked Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election at the Jan. 6, 2021, joint session of Congress, he “asked him in an aspirational way.” Lauro said the same about Trump’s infamous phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, whom he asked to “find 11,780 votes” that would allow him to be declared the winner of the state.

“That was an aspirational ask,” Lauro said.

In Lauro’s telling, Trump simply asked, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent election outcome?” and nothing more. 

But as the indictment alleges, Trump did far more than just “aspirationally” ask Pence. He and his co-conspirators are accused of concocting and attempting to implement a scheme to draft fake electors and, in the process, disenfranchise actual voters. And as Pence has said, the former president didn’t merely ask him to stop the certification — he pushed him to “reject votes outright” and “overturn the election.” 

Lauro’s argument is akin to defending an accused bank robber with the claim that “he only aspirationally asked the teller to give him money.” As a defense, it’s ludicrous and insulting to the intelligence of anyone it seeks to persuade.

Then again, Lauro said his client committed a “technical violation of the Constitution” but “not a violation of criminal law,” which suggests that maybe the lawyer representing Trump is a few law books short of being Clarence Darrow.

But Trump’s making nonsensical arguments follows a familiar pattern in his attempts to get out of trouble. Who can forget his allegedly “perfect” phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which led to his first impeachment? After his indictment in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, Trump claimed he had a right to possess certain government documents after having left office (he didn’t), that he had sole discretion in deciding which of his papers to turn over to the government (nope) and that Hillary Clinton and Biden did even worse things with classified documents than he did (they didn’t). 

Perhaps Trump’s most moronic and outlandish argument was that he had the right to declassify documents with his mind — a claim utterly ludicrous and yet amazingly debunked by an audio recording in which he acknowledged that he held on to classified documents that, “as president, I could have declassified,” but “now I can’t.”

To be fair, Lauro is in an impossible position. The evidence against his client appears to be overwhelming. Trump continues to imperil himself further by constantly commenting on the cases and attacking the special counsel and the judge. There is no good legal or moral defense for Trump’s alleged actions, and his only hope for a not guilty verdict may rest on the jury’s giving him a pass because they think his elevator peters out well short of the top floor. 

While it’s highly unlikely, one can’t completely dismiss the possibility that jurors will give him such a pass. After all, in 2020, after four years of Trump’s demonstrating that he is as sharp as a bowling ball, 74 million Americans thought he should spend another four years in the nation’s most powerful elected office.

The Verdict Will Be Believed Only If The Trial Is Televised

The following op-ed is by Steven Brill (the founder of Court TV) in The New York Times:

The only issue that Americans on all sides of our vast political divide seem to agree on is that we cannot agree on anything. Even basic facts have become matters of opinion.

It is a fact, not an opinion, that Bill Gates did not mastermind a plot to embed microchips into Covid vaccines so that Americans could be tracked and their minds controlled. But polls indicate that about one-fifth of all Americans believe the microchip conspiracy theory to be true or are unsure whether it is true.

It is a fact that Hunter Biden’s laptop was real, not part of a Russian disinformation campaign. But a poll taken nearly three months ago, long after The New York Times and others confirmed that the laptop was real, found that 41 percent of Americans, including 59 percent of Democrats, still did not believe it was.

In the work I do looking at the reliability of online news and information, I can see that the erosion of trust in basic facts is largely the result of too many people getting their news from social media platforms. What they see there may be highly opinionated, one-sided, boiled down to a few words or catchy phrases, or taken out of context, come from people with undisclosed credentials or agendas, or be just plain made up. And it’s all sorted out and presented by algorithms designed to engage them to spend more time on the platform by offering up content that will excite rather than inform, and please them rather than challenge them, by reinforcing what they already believe.

What’s presented to jurors in a courtroom has the opposite qualities. Court is a quiet, somber sanctuary, where rules prevent the disorienting chaos we experience online. Jurors are made aware of the credentials and possible biases of witnesses. Documents and other exhibits are painstakingly authenticated. The admissibility of evidence is carefully vetted by a judge, and after a lawyer on one side is allowed to present it, a lawyer on the other side can then challenge it, with both lawyers strictly limited by rules not allowing them to present hearsay or rumors or offer their opinions.

In the 1980s, as a journalist reporting on the law, I interviewed jurors after their trials to find out how they had reached their verdicts. After a while, one thing struck me as unusually consistent: Jurors said that after sitting on juries they were surprised by how much more favorably they thought of our justice system. When they got to see the system up close and at full length — instead of how it was displayed on the 11 o’clock news (this was well before we all went online), with sound-bite spins from lawyers on the courthouse steps or prosecutors at a news conference — they decided that it worked well. That it did a good job sorting out the truth. More than one juror told me that it was something we should all be proud of.

In 1991, I started the cable network Court TV to provide that same unobstructed view of the American justice system. People at home could watch what jurors watched instead of being spun by headlines, dueling news conferences or courthouse-steps sound bites. I pointed out that in the 19th century courthouses had been built with large seating areas for people in town to come watch trials, which under the Constitution were supposed to be public. In the 20th century, an unobtrusive camera beaming a trial out to the community was the right modern update and, in fact, a more effective way to keep faith with the founders’ view that trials should be publicly accessible.

Although my constitutional argument was never widely accepted, by the time I left Court TV in 1997, a clear majority of states allowed cameras in their courts in one way or another. Some judges still opposed cameras. Many lawyers, especially some defense lawyers in criminal cases and product liability civil cases, opposed cameras, too. Nonetheless, cameras had become the rule, not the exception, in state courts.

The federal courts are a different story.

Sometime this year or next, a Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., will likely be the scene of what may be the most consequential trial in the nation’s history. A jury will have to decide whether a former president of the United States is guilty of plotting to corrupt the democratic process and overturn an election.

Federal court rules do not allow cameras in any criminal trials. However, no matter which side of this Donald Trump case you may be rooting for, you should want those rules to be suspended so that this trial can be televised live.

The last thing our country and the world needs is for this trial to become the ultimate divisive spin game, in which each side roots for its team online and on the cable news networks as if cheering from the bleachers. Much of that would still happen, but imagine how a quiet, methodical, but sure-to-be-riveting presentation of both sides’ arguments — subject to the rules of evidence and decorum of a federal court, not the algorithms of Facebook and Twitter — might temper the national mood when a verdict is announced. At the least, it will make people more informed about what could be the single most important activity their government will conduct in their lifetimes.

An ancillary benefit to setting up one silent pool camera in the back of the courtroom and sending a feed to all media outlets around the world that want it is that it would give the judge and court administrators a good rationale for pushing away from the courthouse the likely circus outside. The scrum of cameras and journalists — gathered for the trial of the century, but unable to give their audiences a full picture of what is happening inside, and trying to get offhand comments from one of the lawyers on the case or from the mass of lawyer-pundits who wish they were on the case — is otherwise likely to make the chaos of past high-profile trials look placid.

Of course, the cable networks arrayed on each side would still have their lawyer-pundits spinning for or against Mr. Trump. But these cable channels and websites, unwilling to risk losing their audiences, would likely also livestream the actual trial as it proceeds. I know from experience that the ratings for this live action will likely dwarf the audiences for in-studio talking heads.

As a result, detractors of Mr. Trump logging on to their favorite websites or watching their favorite news channels would have to see and confront the defense argument that there is not sufficient evidence that Mr. Trump knew he lost the election, which almost certainly must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to convict him on any of the charges he faces. These are truly strong arguments. That may surprise many Trump haters, given their likely current media diets. They need to be better informed.

Mr. Trump’s defenders, on the other hand, would have to confront the fire hose of detailed evidence of multiple plots to overturn the election, which were outlined convincingly but sparingly in an indictment that few of them have likely read. That, too, is evidence that might not be available in their regular media diets. In fact, they may not have even seen or heard anyone describe the details of the indictment. But they will if they see the trial.

Suspending the rule against cameras in federal criminal trials will not be easy. In fact, it requires suspending three rules. First, the U.S. Judicial Conference, chaired by the Supreme Court’s chief justice, John Roberts, and consisting of the chief judges from each of the country’s appellate circuits and the Court of International Trade and trial judges from each of those circuits, would have to vote to suspend its nationwide rule against cameras in federal criminal trials. The judicial council of the District of Columbia Circuit has its own rule, which would then have to be suspended. And then the federal rules of criminal procedure, which also prohibit cameras, would have to be changed.

That is a lot of hurdles to overcome in forums that have not traditionally favored public access to the courts, especially for criminal proceedings. But there are months, maybe even a year or more, to persuade those in charge that this is a unique situation that defies tradition and demands an exception. It’s an exception that even partisans on each side, including Mr. Trump, should welcome, because it is the only sure way that each side will get the other to see its arguments unfiltered. More than that, it’s the exception that will provide everyone with the facts.

What the jurors decide will likely be debated by the rest of us forever. We should be debating their verdict using the same set of facts that they saw.

Donald Trump's Federal Trials Should Be Televised

The following op-ed is by Georgetown law professor Neal Katyal in The Washington Post:

The upcoming trial of United States v. Donald J. Trump will rank with Marbury v. Madison, Brown v. Board of Education and Dred Scott v. Sandford as a defining moment for our history and our values as a people. And yet, federal law will prevent all but a handful of Americans from actually seeing what is happening in the trial. We will be relegated to perusing cold transcripts and secondhand descriptions. The law must be changed.

While many states allow cameras in courtrooms, federal courts generally do not. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 53 states: “Except as otherwise provided by a statute or these rules, the court must not permit the taking of photographs in the courtroom during judicial proceedings or the broadcasting of judicial proceedings from the courtroom.” Whatever the virtues of this rule might have been when it was adopted in 1946, it is beyond antiquated today. We live in a digital age, where people think visually and are accustomed to seeing things with their own eyes.

A criminal trial is all about witnesses and credibility, and the demeanor of participants plays a big role. A cold transcript cannot convey the emotion on a defendant’s face when a prosecution witness is on the stand, or how he walks into the courtroom each day.

Most important, live (or near-live) broadcasting lets Americans see for themselves what is happening in the courtroom and would go a long way toward reassuring them that justice is being done. They would be less vulnerable to the distortions and misrepresentations that will inevitably be part of the highly charged, politicized discussion flooding the country as the trial plays out. Justice Louis Brandeis’s observation that “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants” is absolutely apt here.

There are at least two pathways toward televising the Trump trial. One is for the Judicial Conference, run by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., to vote for an amendment to Rule 53. 

Indeed, the conference has considered the idea of allowing cameras for more than 30 years and in 1994, it considered and rejected a proposal to televise criminal trials. But there is no need for the conference to resuscitate that proposal — it need only authorize broadcast of this unique case.

The other mechanism is for Congress to pass a law — a possibility contemplated in Rule 53. While Congress finds itself incapable of much action these days, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) notably introduced a bill this year that provides a framework for presiding federal judges to permit television coverage of their trials. That legislation could be a model for a specific bill in the Trump case. This shouldn’t be a partisan issue. (Grassley’s bill was co-sponsored by four Democratic senators.) Democrats might expect the broadcast to demonstrate to skeptics the definitive clarity of the prosecution’s case against Trump; Republicans might count on the audience seeing the trial as a tedious, technicality-laden political stunt.

Allowing cameras in the courtroom squares with the purpose of the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees a public trial. The handful of public observers in the courtroom might technically meet the amendment’s criteria. But in our Instagram era, an event that allows only a few to actually see hardly seems “public.”

Televising the trial would also provide deep educational benefits. Law is often viewed as inaccessible, chock full of jargon and impenetrable procedures. This broadcast would provide a real-time civics lesson, especially for children, in how our legal system operates.

Some fear that televising trials will create a circus atmosphere, undermining the decorum and dignity of the court. That risk exists, but the far greater risk is that if this trial is done out of the public eye, many more people will question the legitimacy of the court and its decisions. We should do what is needed to keep that from happening. This case, after all, is not some celebrity spectacle or a morbidly fascinating murder being broadcast for ad revenue or high ratings. It is the gravest matter of public concern imaginable: A former president is alleged to have tried to launch a coup to keep himself in power, and used his powers as president to do so.

A recent high-profile case offers an example of the successful use of cameras in the courtroom: the 2021 trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd (in which I served as a special prosecutor). It took place in Minnesota, which has a flat ban televising criminal trials. The judge authorized an exception, even though the Minnesota rule mirrored the language of federal Rule 53. And television worked. Americans across the land watched the trial and observed the demeanor of Chauvin and the others involved. When the verdict was rendered, the fact that so many had seen the trial firsthand went a long way toward building public confidence in the jury’s decision.

Besides the states and other U.S. jurisdictions that allow criminal trials to be televised, the International Criminal Court also broadcasts its proceedings, using a 30 minute delay to ensure confidentiality of information. All of this reflects the need to assure the public that justice is being done.

This criminal trial is being conducted in the name of the people of the United States. It is our tax dollars at work. We have a right to see it. And we have the right to ensure that rumormongers and conspiracy theorists don’t control the narrative.

Americans Approve Of Guilty Verdicts For Arbery Killing

The chart above is from the Morning Consult Poll -- done between November 24th and 27th of a national sample of 2,200 adults, with a 2 point margin of error. 

57% Say Chauvin Is Guilty - Only 40% Say Jury Will Convict

The charts above reflect the results of the new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between April 3rd and 6th of a national sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,243 registered voters). The margin of error for adults is 2.8 points, and for registered voters is 3 points.

A significant majority of Americans (57% of adults and 58% of registered voters) believe Derek Chauvin should be convicted of the murder of George Floyd.

However, being aware of other trials of policeman, less than a majority believe that will happen --only 40% of adults and 42% of registered voters.

Will The Minneapolis Policeman Get Away With Murder?

The eyes of the nation are on the trial of Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis. He's the policeman who had his knee pressing down on the neck of George Floyd -- after Floyd was handcuffed and on the ground, That action resulted in the death of George Floyd, and most Americans have seen and been shocked by the video of Floyd being killed.

After viewing the video, I think many probably think a guilty verdict is a sure thing. But that is naive. It is extremely rare for a policeman to be convicted for assaulting or killing a suspect. We will have to wait and see if the Minneapolis jury is going to convict or let Chauvin off.

The following is part of a post by Shaun King in The North Star:

They weren’t subduing George Floyd - no - George Floyd was handcuffed, hands behind his back, on his stomach, and lifeless. They weren’t protecting themselves or the community. If that argument could ever be made, it damn sure ceased to be true for the final 300+ seconds that grown men refused to let up off of his limp body. That wasn’t protection - it was punishment. And on May 25th, 2020 the Minneapolis Police Department, with Officer Derek Chauvin in charge, and his band of brothers joining in, served as judge, jury, and executioner of George Floyd. 

It’s called buck-busting. Or buck-breaking. Google it. It has a long history in slave-holding countries and it’s where white men would get the biggest, strongest Black man they could find and torture him in the most unthinkable ways imaginable in front of every enslaved African on the plantation, sometimes even from neighboring plantations, often unto death, just to show everybody that the white man was in charge. Yesterday the defense attorneys already started using the Black-Hulk defense, telling the jury how huge George was and how puny Derek Chauvin was. This defense, too, has deep roots in American history and ties to the murders of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Daniel Prude, and more.

This has always been a violent place. From the tens of millions of Native Americans who were killed, to the tens of millions of Africans who were enslaved, raped, tortured, bred, bought, sold, traded, and worked to death for generations, to the wars here and abroad, to the nearly 400 million guns in circulation - this place has always been, above all else, a deeply violent place.

The literal National Anthem of this land, written by a monster, is literally about violence with “the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air.” Our first president owned hundreds of human beings and used their good teeth to replace his rotten ones. This country killed its greatest presidents. This country murdered its greatest leaders. This country killed Emmett Till and set his killers free. This country murdered freedom riders, buried them, and refused to hold anyone accountable. This country - with its mass shootings on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday - killing Asian women, killing school children, killing Black folk in church studying the Bible - violence, not peace, not freedom, violence, is the core value of this nation.

Yes, Dr. King said that riots are “the language of the unheard,” but hear me now - if Derek Chauvin is not convicted of some degree - first, second, or third - of murder, if he is not held accountable in the court of law, a reckoning is going to befall this country one way or another. And it should.

Convicting Derek Chauvin is the floor. It is the least. Hell, that’s not even justice. It’s a fraction, a semblance of accountability, but if justice means balancing the scales for what they did to this man, then sending Derek Chauvin to prison is a start, but we’re calling for that, and so much more. We’re calling for an end to qualified immunity. We’re calling for a radical new definition of public safety in every town, city, and county in this country. We’re calling for reimagined budgets and priorities. We’re calling for the decriminalization of poverty, substance use and abuse, and mental health. We’re calling for the complete renegotiation of police union contracts nationwide. We’re calling for a ban on prosecutors and politicians receiving money from police and their unions. We’re calling for an end on the war on drugs. We are calling on a complete expungement of drug crimes from records. We’re calling on the profits and tax revenues from marijuana to be used to revitalize the people and communities most impacted by the racist war on drugs.

So yeah - convict this man - do it on the evidence - but understand this - millions of Americans have already had their patience worn thin. And millions of Americans no longer believe you when you call for peace and calm for some and not others.