There are those who believe that, with the indictment of Donald Trump, the American criminal justice system will be put on trial. My only comment to that is, “Why did it take so long?”
How is it that an ex-president, on whom the system has boatloads of evidence that a crime was committed, is able to cause that system to be put under a microscope, but an average citizen is allowed to be found guilty of murder and sentenced to death only to be exonerated by DNA evidence years later? How is that? Should a total dissection of the evidence against the ex-president be required simply to charge him with a crime while the average citizen can be indicted, tried, and convicted when there is essentially no evidence against that individual? Because it seems highly unlikely that there could have been enough physical evidence to convict someone beyond a reasonable doubt when that person is later exonerated.
The primary evidence connecting the average citizen to a crime – one he did not commit – might be the testimony of a jail-house snitch. Meanwhile, the ex-president is up against the testimony of people who have top secret security clearances. Yet the average citizen languishes in a jail cell for decades while the entire country debates over whether it is right to even charge the ex-president. I may be wrong, but this certainly seems like a system in need of an overhaul.
While our average citizen likely faced a jury of his peers – all of whom went into the trial viewing him as guilty until proven innocent – it is quite likely that impaneling a jury of twelve Americans who would find the ex-president guilty will be virtually impossible. An acquittal of the average citizen, however, simply means the prosecution screwed up. For he could certainly not have been innocent. This is in stark contrast to the ex-president’s nearly certain acquittal, which will make him even more powerful among those who view him favorably. Such a situation makes our criminal justice system … well, criminal! And criminals should be put on trial.
So when the pundits claim that it is the criminal justice system that is on trial and not Donald Trump, they are right. In this particular instance, however, it is not the ineffective assistance of counsel – which plagues virtually all average citizens when they are forced to confront our much revered (or reviled) system of justice – that has brought about the system’s demise. It is the huge percentage of Americans who continue to idolize Trump the criminal defendant with the same zeal that they had for Trump the candidate, Trump the president, and Trump the insurrectionist.
As long as that particular group of “average citizens” remains responsible for putting the criminal justice system on trial, a fair and impartial jury will eventually become a mythological entity.
Indeed, the first question that will be asked of potential jurors in the very near future may well be, “Who did you vote for in the last presidential election?”
So the trial of the criminal justice system may well result in the trial of a murderer or a rapist becoming a thing of the past. What will happen then is anybody’s guess. Perhaps the nation can replace the current system with Artificial Intelligence. Trial by jury may one day become trial by “ChatGPT.”
William Chaplar
