On the Verdict of the Chauvin Trial | Can We Have Faith in Our Institutions?

The Chauvin Trial, and the verdict today, trouble me.

On the face of it, whether or not the jury was honest in its decision seems moot.

It seems that if any other decision was made today, huge riots—murdering and looting—would have ensued.

If the jury was honest in its decision, how can we know or be sure?

It seems almost entirely as if we live by the mercy of mobs, not the rule of law.

I was not on the jury.

I cannot judge the jury.

I was not at the trial.

I do not know if Mr. Chauvin was as guilty as those early videos made him out to be.

I do not trust the jury to have made an honest decision here.

I do not trust our laws to defend justice.

I like to write horror.

This whole situation seems horrible, the type of inflection point from which may be charted a new and terrible downward trend.

I have slowly been working through the Gulag Archipelago; I can’t help but think about the show trials Solzhenitsyn described.

How long until we drop the farce of justice and just commit to rendering our decisions by political fiat?