George Floyd is a guy who I never met, never was destined to
meet and anyway, we all missed our
chance. In an arrest for a non-violent
crime this week, one or more officers of Minneapolis Police Department killed
him. (Was it murder? Not until 12 old darlings on a jury says it is.)
Public disturbances – bordering just a touch on rioting –
have broken out in Minneapolis. The
theme: “Justice for George.”
Nope. Not going to
happen unless you have an outlandish sense of what it just.
Take the immediate demands of the demonstrators: An immediate arrest, a successful prosecution
and a prison sentence. Will that give
George justice? Will his personal loss
lessen in any way? Enlighten me if you
believe he gets justice. Some religious
folk hold that a murdered person rests easier in the afterlife when the
murderer(s) is/are punished. I know of
no authoritative proof either way, but it seems to me that – if that is indeed
so – it is hardly justice. Justice, to
my way of thinking, returns one to the status one would have had if the wrong
was not done.
An arrest of some people does take time. It does seem to me that the officer directly
(hands-on) responsible can be arrested immediately. But it has to be done by somebody other than
the Minneapolis PD. While a county
prosecutor can approve the initial charges, s/he needs post haste to get a
special prosecutor from somewhere far away.
What s/he cannot do is bury the case or make any kind of deal, even a
fair deal. I cannot begin to define
what a fair deal with consist of. In
murders I have done, I only recall deciding what a fair deal would be in the
first week once in 25 tries. (Nope, not
gonna tell you details.)
That the Minneapolis officer(s) is criminally responsible
has occurred to everyone, right, left, north and south. I was reading a post by Joe Ligotti (The Guy
from Boston™)
going on in his usual blunt (read obscene) fashion about how guilty the guy
is. If Joe’s against an officer, the
officer has very little hope of any neutral publicity coming.
The media is assuming that a civil suit will result. (The odds of it NOT happening are about the
same as me winning the Boston Marathon.)
But when such a suit happens, and the insurance company (aided by
premiums paid from tax money), the City of Minneapolis (aided by tax money from
everyone including the demonstrators) and the individual officers (who don’t
have much to begin with) pays a few million dollars.
To whom? Well, they
can’t pay it to George. They’ll pay it
to whoever Minnesota law designates, his heirs or others entitled by a statute
to take money from a wrongful death. Will
the money give George justice? Tell me how. How about
the people who actually get the money?
Will they feel, at least, vindicated?
How about the lawyers on each side?
Will they curse the act but bless the day it was referred to them? Maybe secretly.
How about a clever trial lawyer demands changes in the
police departments training and policies?
(That will likely happen, but that the state attorney general for the federal
DOJ will move on this is more likely than the survivors’ counsel.) That might prevent further harm to others, but not so much as you might think. Doing child abuse cases made me think of the limited use of a class that starts "Don't beat your children." If a student is that dense, do you suppose you can get through to them?
So you decide – Does George get
justice? I'd like to hear how, I really would.
Moral? Maybe the world is
not just. Our much vaunted justice
system gives, at best, a poor ration of justice and often to the wrong
people.
Maybe a better moral is that there is no reset button in
life. Once a stupid or evil act is done,
you have to live with the consequences.
Mizpah.
Look it up –
I really mean it, Mizpah!
