Guyger murdered an unarmed man in his living room and only got 10 years...
Sorry, man, I'm not as sanguine on our legal system as you are. That the blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut doesn't impress me.
Most poor defendants get railroaded because their public defenders don't give a shit.
Wealthy ones (or ones who get a lot of donations like Rittenhouse) get a lawyer that massively outclasses the civil servants at the DA's office.
So slick lawyers come up with a song and dance where 12 morons too stupid to get out of jury duty were told that even though we have Rittenhouse walking through the street gunning people down on videotape, it was totally self defense. Combine that with inept prosecutors and a judge who was a clinical moron, and you get the result you got.
Of course, it's what the jurors didn't get to hear. The Jurors never got to hear that Joseph Rosenbaum was mentally ill or a child molester. and they didn't get to hear that Rittenhouse hung out having beers with the Proud Boys.
To a certain extent, I sort of agree with you. However I do agree with the court leaving out irrelevant or other information that isn’t Germaine to the issue.
An example is a woman who claims rape. Having her describe her previous sexual experiences, consensual experiences, to show she is a loose woman, I object to. It is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Was she raped?
Now, to the trials. Rittenhouse had a terrible Prosecutor. He was unprepared, and frankly, not as good as he should have been. Not the first time we’ve seen that. We saw it during the OJ trial. When someone posted a thread asking what we thought the outcome would be, and the trial was about half over, I said not guilty. Not because I thought he did the right thing, but because like OJ, the Defense did a great job.
And here I am torn. While I want the Guilty to go to Prison, I also believe it is better for a thousand guilty men to go free instead of one innocent man goes to prison.
We have seen rhetoric send people to prison. A great prosecutor can do that. The fellow prosecuting Rittenhouse was not great, and frankly wasn’t very good. It seemed to me, when I watched what little I did, as if he was working his way through the list of evidence, off a sheet, as if it was the first time he’d ever seen it. Poor preparation, or perhaps just poor skills. I don’t know. I know the result. A winnable case was lost, and thank God we live in the United States where such things can happen.
As to Public Defenders, I know. Believe me I know. They are overworked, and numbed, swamped beneath too many cases to even hope to give one the attention it deserves. Unfortunately, I don’t know what we can do about that. The public isn’t going to pony up enough money to hire enough people to give the poor defendants a decent defense. I honestly don’t know what we can do. I agree it is a problem, but I don’t see any solution.
But this case is the McMichaels. And we have seen what a good Prosecution can do. Today, they will be doing the closing arguments, and then instructions will be given to the Jury. It will be after Thanksgiving before any decision can be reached. There just isn’t enough time before hand. Being as I am in Georgia, I’ve watched this one more than the Rittenhouse case. It’s nearly a local thing for me.
But we saw what a good Prosecutor can do. One familiar with the evidence, and who was able to about do it off the top of her head. It is what pushed the Defense Attorney Gaugh into such asinine movements. An effort to get a Mistrial and another shot. He knew early on that they were losing. And he pulled stunts to try and get it tossed so he could then pass the torch to another, and let them lose the case.
The better defense attorneys were working for Greg and Travis, and even they know they are losing. You can see it in their faces. They have the advantage of seeing the Jury. And we know this is the case, because the usual suspects aren’t here talking about how the McMichaels are going to be totally vindicated.
The usual Blacks are totally dangerous and criminal posters are suddenly silent. They are busy cheering the Rittenhouse decision. But their point up to this stage of the game was wait for the trail. We’ll see. During the first day or two they even tried to claim the Defense was winning, and now, silence. Nothing from them.
They are now moving on to pretend that this trial doesn’t matter. And they never had a previous opinion.
Another Week, or ten days, and the McMichaels are going to be wishing they had fled the country when they had the chance. Because I think that Travis is going to get Life, Greg is going to get twenty to life, and Roddy is going to get Twenty years. Word is that his lawyer was trying to get a Plea Deal last week. Roddy knows he’s screwed, and he was hoping to find a way to get out from under it with a lot less time.
Georgia Prisons are awful. And the three of them will have little choice but to hope for isolation, and I don’t think they’re nearly tough enough to take that for long.
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