28 May 2020

George Will Get No Justice; Demonstrate Away, You Can't Change It.



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!


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