Eleven to One

Everybody talks about the polarization between the Left and the Right in this country.  I don’t think it’s overstated.  The Trump hush money trial in Manhattan is the perfect litmus test for this polarization.  If you can believe that he is getting a fair trial then you are living in a separate reality.  The degree to which the judge has put his thumb on the scales of justice is pretty breathtaking.  He has managed to instruct the jury that beyond a reasonable doubt is no longer the criterion for conviction.  In fact, he is allowing the jurors to decide what exactly the underlying crime is without recourse to any particular part of the penal code.

But I guess I’m curious what percentage of the population in this country is okay with this.  Because even if it’s as low as forty five percent then that’s a really big problem.  The Left is about a third of the populace.  If there is another twelve percent of the people who are completely on board with a court railroading a presidential candidate just because they don’t like the way he parts his hair then we’re already past the point where things can be fixed.  There has to be two thirds or at least three fifths of the people who are relatively sane to protect us all from the crazies.  We can’t expect to just squeak past every one of the forks in the road where the insane are pushing us to ride off a cliff.  It can’t always be 51-49.  One of these days we will go over the edge.

Many years ago, I served on a jury where the prosecution was trying to railroad a guy on a charge of making a death threat against his ex-wife.    After the trial the judge shared with us that there was an underlying custody battle going on and this charge was a part of that struggle.  But the only person who supposedly had heard the threat was the couple’s two-year-old daughter.  Her mother claimed that the girl had told her of the threat that her father had made in front of her during a visit with him.  But every time they tried to put the two-year-old on the witness stand she burst into tears and then we were sequestered while the prosecution attempted to bolster the little girl for the next attempt at questioning.  After the third attempt the judge put an end to this charade and we were sent into the jury room to deliberate.  Well, I’ll tell you it was 11-1 and I don’t suppose you have to wonder who was one.  Eventually they tried to talk me into splitting the decision by voting guilty to one of the lesser charges.  You know, split the difference.  So, I asked them what part of beyond a reasonable doubt didn’t apply to any of the charges.

Now that day I had gone into the courtroom determined to hang’em high.  No namby-pamby bleeding-heart nonsense for me.  The guilty must pay.  And this guy didn’t look like me or lived his life as I did.  But suddenly all these other people who looked and lived like me were exposing their real feelings about unbiased justice.  They were just picking the side they liked.  To hell with the facts or the lack of facts.  They were willing to send this man to prison for five years without proof.  It was monstrous.

Three hours later they called it a hung jury and the judge talked to us and admitted that using a two-year-old as a witness was ludicrous and a little cruel.  But my fellow jurors were very angry with me.  They wanted to send a message regardless of the facts; “believe the woman.”  Going home that night I had a sickening feeling about what justice in this country had become.  Imagine your fate is decided not by the evidence but by what you look like.  That was a chilling discovery.

Now I know it’s a forlorn hope, but I admit I’d love to see an 11-1 hung jury.  That would send a powerful message that there are still a few honest men left.  And we really do need that message.  Because otherwise there isn’t any way that we can go forward together.  If the truth is just an inconvenience that we have to shrug off to get what we want then we’re doomed.

Update – 30MAY2024 – Yep, we’re doomed.