The Chauvin jury just may do what it wants: Don't believe the pundits telling you that a guilty verdict is a foregone conclusion
American Thinker ^ | 04/20/2021 | John Mastronardi
Posted on 4/20/2021, 10:10:4
All that remains of the trial of Derek Chauvin is the verdict. Conventional wisdom (C.W.), since about two minutes after the first cell phone videos hit the internet and the riots started, was that Derek Chauvin would be convicted of the murder of George Floyd. This C.W. seems to be buttressed by two theories. The first is that the evidence is essentially incontrovertible, so, on the merits, there should be an easy conviction.
The second is entirely cynical: the jury will vote to convict, whether or not the evidence supports a conviction, simply to avoid the riots that will certainly result from a not guilty verdict. Therefore, according to the C.W., a guilty verdict is almost a moral certainty.
When the C.W. is trending in such an overwhelming direction, it’s always prudent to check the other direction. What are the chances of a not guilty verdict? As surprising as it may seem, they might not be as low as people think.
Any attorney who has tried cases before a jury, whether they are civil or criminal, will tell you that the only “certainty” about juries is their uncertainty. Any pundit or so-called “legal expert” who tells you he can predict to any level of precision what verdict a jury will return is spreading the stuff you put on the garden to fertilize the tomatoes.
For the last 26 years, I have defended civil cases, the outcome of which, frankly, mattered to no one beyond the parties involved. They received nowhere near the level of public scrutiny as this one. For the most part, the verdicts came back as expected, but not all of them. Some were very surprising, so trying to predict the Chauvin verdict is truly a fool’s errand.
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