If you don’t recall the long sad story of the nine black teenagers convicted for raping two white women nine decades ago in Alabama, convictions clearly handed down in an atmosphere of extreme racial prejudice, here’s the account. In much the same way, I believe the conviction of Derek Chauvin on three counts -- each with inconsistent elements of the offense -- in an undeniably prejudicial atmosphere violates the Supreme Court ruling in Sheppard v Maxwell (384 U.S. 333) where the Court ruled that while the press had the right under the First Amendment to publish stories about the murder of Sam Sheppard’s wife, the defendant had the right under the Sixth Amendment to Due Process and in failing to protect the defendant by postponing the trial or moving it to another venue, the court had deprived the defendant of his right to a fair trial. 

The Atmosphere in Minneapolis

Beginning last May, Minneapolis was the scene of riots in protest of George Floyd’s death, riots that destroyed 100 buildings and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage from fires and looting. By June of that year the area riots were the cause of two deaths and over $500 million in damage. The corporate media and (I’m sorry to say, universities and schools as well) harped on the death as yet more evidence of some nonsense called “systemic racism,” suggesting that the death was deliberate. In fact, none of the three charges against Chauvin indicated that he intentionally killed George Floyd.

Here are the charges:  

• Second-degree unintentional murder means causing death without intent by committing a felony.
• Second-degree manslaughter is causing death by unreasonable risk.
• Third-degree murder means causing death by an “eminently dangerous” act, showing a “depraved mind.”

Press accounts bought the race baiters' claim of an “epidemic” of police shooting unarmed black males. Depending on your political inclinations, estimates of the numbers vary. Very liberal respondents to surveys said about 10,000 unarmed black males were killed by police, The actual figure for the 2019, last year in which I can find figures, was eleven.  Kyle Becker writes:

These tragic cases are not only statistical outliers, they are far from ‘black and white’ in terms of what motivated the police shooting. In nearly every case, a suspect was wanted by police and threatening circumstances gave rise to an unfortunate police shooting.

• Daunte Wright had a warrant out for his arrest for aggravated armed robbery of a woman and unlawful possession of a firearm. He resisted arrest and attempted to flee in a vehicle before being shot.
• Contrary to misleading reports that he was ‘unarmed,’ Jacob Blake admitted that he was armed with a knife.
• 13-year-old Adam Toledo was armed and gun residue was found on his hand. He tossed a 9mm Ruger moments before being shot.
• Michael Brown fought with a police officer for his gun. He later advanced despite being told to freeze. ‘Hands up, don’t shoot’ is a lie.
• Laquan McDonald had a knife in his hand. He was suspected of committing robbery. He punctured the tires of a police cruiser following him and smashed its windshield.
• Tamir Rice had a toy gun that was mistaken for a real one. A grand jury decided it was an accident and did not bring charges. The family is now pleading for the DoJ to reopen the closed case.

Even if one concludes that these police shootings were wrong, the cases are a lot grayer than the mainstream media often portrays. The radical activist left has nonetheless weaponized these people’s tragic stories to push a truly dangerous agenda: Defunding the police.

Amid this atmosphere of local rioting and relentless media misinformation, the judge in Chauvin refused to change the place of the trial, refused to sequester the jury, did not adequately warn them about viewing and hearing outside reports of the case, the city, in the middle of the case, entered into a highly-publicized $27 million dollar settlement with Floyd’s family, and both the President and Maxine Waters weighed in on his guilt and the consequences of a not guilty verdict. The local press, without disclosing the names of the jurors, revealed very specific identifying information about them. In advance of the verdict, Governor Tim Walz asked for help from the Ohio and Nebraska National Guard, again emphasizing the likelihood of further riots if a guilty verdict were not reached.

An alternate juror said that the jurors were so concerned about their identities being revealed that among themselves they did not refer to each other by name, just juror number.

“Lisa Christensen was the juror who lived in Brooklyn Center. One night she could hardly make it home after testimony ended because of protesters blocking intersections.”

She expressed her concern about serving on the jury:

Raguse: Did you want to be a juror?

Christensen: I had mixed feelings. There was a question on the questionnaire about that and I put I didn’t know. Because the reason, at that time, was, obviously, I didn’t know what the outcome was going to be, so I felt like either way the outcome was, you’re going to disappoint one group or the other. So, I didn’t want to go through this whole rioting and destruction again and, you know, a little concerned about people outside my house if they weren’t happy with the verdict.

On the day that the racist agitators got the verdict they wanted, the Systemic Racism Crowd was not satisfied. To them the verdict proves there is systemic racism which we all should feel guilty about and turn our society upside down to root  out. (Of course, this is a no-win, as they’d have said the same thing if he had not been convicted.)

Brandon Tatum was having none of it, to the disappointment of the BBC interviewer.

Feeling even more powerful after the verdict, the race fantasists beclowned themselves when on the same day the verdict was handed down a police officer in Columbus, Ohio shot a 16-year-old girl. The girl who was shot was wielding a knife, threatening a bystander with it while yelling she was going to stab her and she refused to drop the weapon when he told her to. 

Morons like Joy Behar, LeBron James, and anti-police activist Bree Newsome were widely and justifiably ridiculed for blaming the cop.

Filmmaker and anti-police activist Bree Newsome was ridiculed on social media after arguing that officers should not get involved in knife fights between teenagers because young people have fought with knives for “eons.”

After police fatally shot 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant, who was seen on bodycam footage running at another girl while seemingly holding a knife, Newsome condemned officers for stopping the attacker.

“Teenagers have been having fights including fights involving knives for eons,” tweeted Newsome. “We do not need police to address these situations by showing up to the scene & using a weapon against one of the teenagers.”

Her tweet shocked many on social media, including some who decided to parody her comments with photos of iconic blade fights in movies like ‘Commando’, ‘Freddy vs Jason’, and others. Almost all of the parodies copied Newsome’s tweet word-for-word.

Don’t think that responsible members of the Black community miss the lesson that anti-law enforcement, defund the police movements place them in greater jeopardy. The demagogues and race baiters are out to increase their own power at the expense of the communities’ best interests in protecting their lives and property. I assume, of course, if the officer had stood by and not shot when the knife was inches away from the bystander, who was also Black, the same crowd would argue that he refused to help the intended victim because of her race.

What  is behind the phrase “systemic racism” in the utter absence of evidence of  it? The best explanation I have found is in this fine essay by James Lindsay, which I urge you to read: 

“Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power” for the term and idea, we can refer to these alternative realities as ideological pseudo-realities.

Pseudo-realities, being false and unreal, will always generate tragedy and evil on a scale that is at least proportional to the reach of their grip on power -- which is their chief interest -- whether social, cultural, economic, political, or (particularly) a combination of several or all of these. So important to the development and tragedies of societies are these pseudo-realities when they arise and take root that it is worth outlining their basic properties and structure so that they can be identified and properly resisted before they result in sociopolitical calamities -- up to and including war, genocide, and even civilizational collapse, all of which can take many millions of lives and can ruin many millions more in the vain pursuit of a fiction whose believers are, or are made, sufficiently intolerant.

Quit eating the stew of misinformation, psychological manipulation, and hatred that demagogues, grifters, and power-hungry members of the government and press are feeding you. It is a road to social and economic disaster.

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