Trials That Deserve Attention

There have been a lot of high-profile trials lately, but they haven't all gotten the same amount of media coverage.

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

Over the past several weeks there have been quite a few high-profile cases going through the court system. The most obvious and definitely the most polarizing of these was that of Kyle Rittenhouse, the then 17-year-old who shot three men — killing two — in Kenosha, Wisconsin during one of the riots that followed the police shooting of Jacob Blake in the summer of 2020. On November 19 of this year, he was found not guilty by a jury of his peers on all charges.

That case highlighted some of the many problems that plague our criminal justice system, as well as the corporate press’ blatant disregard for the truth. From nearly the moment that story broke, Kyle Rittenhouse was deemed a “white supremacist” by a large portion of the mainstream media, especially by more left-leaning outlets. The unfortunate event was treated as an obvious example of a racist mass shooter who specifically targeted Black Lives Matter protesters, but the reality of the situation was much more nuanced.

There were many popular misconceptions about that case, some of which were obviously false from the start, and others that were debunked during the course of the trial. For anyone who paid attention, an acquittal seemed probable; those who didn’t follow the details of the trial, however, were disgusted with the verdict and the response from both sides of the aisle was a glaring example of the toxic divisiveness that continues to fester in this country.

Conservatives were quick to paint Kyle Rittenhouse as a hero, although that was possibly an overreaction to the left immediately portraying him as a villain. In reality, he is neither. He was a naive 17-year-old boy who may have had good intentions, but who ultimately put himself in a dangerous situation that ended in two people being killed. This isn’t to say that the people participating in the riots were in the right, just that Kyle’s decision to be there was also unwise. As usual, the constant bickering between the loudest portions of both sides of our political spectrum was enough to muffle any rational discussion, and it also distracted from other cases that deserve our attention.

On the same day that Rittenhouse was acquitted in Wisconsin, another man in Florida was found not guilty in a trial that also hinged on self-defense. Back in 2017, Andrew Coffee IV was asleep in his bed next to his girlfriend, Alteria Woods when they awoke to intruders breaking in through the bedroom windows. Coffee — out of a desire to protect himself and his girlfriend — reached for his handgun and fired at the intruders. They fired back, hitting Woods ten times, killing her. Those armed intruders were police officers conducting a no-knock raid, a tactic often used in drug-related cases. While almost always being controversial, whether or not police departments should continue the use of such tactics became a national discussion last year after another drug-raid-gone-wrong resulted in the death of Breonna Taylor.

The use of a no-knock raid in this instance was illogical, given that the police were looking for Andrew Coffee III, Coffee’s father, whom they had arrested without incident earlier in the night. For whatever reason, the police decided to conduct the raid anyway, resulting in Coffee being charged with the attempted murder of a police officer, as well as with the murder of Alteria Woods. Even though Woods was killed by the police, they claimed that because Andrew had fired first, her death was his fault. Unlike Rittenhouse, Coffee’s case took years to finally go to trial and received little attention from the media, but at least it ended in an acquittal of his murder charges. Unfortunately, however, he had previous felony charges on his record which means he still faces a 30-year sentence for being found guilty of illegally possessing a firearm.

Another trial that got overshadowed by the media’s unnecessary infatuation with Kyle Rittenhouse was the trial of Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael, and William Bryan for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia in February 2020. The three men were found guilty on November 24. With how often progressives tried to make the Rittenhouse trial about race — no matter how baseless that claim was — it seemed like the same people were oddly quiet about a case that actually has evidence to suggest it was a racially motivated crime. The prosecutors weren’t attempting to prove that it was, but a federal trial for all three men in the coming months might do just that.

Conservatives were right to point out how awful the prosecutors were in the Rittenhouse case, and I hope after seeing that they realize that that sort of behavior was not an outlier but rather it is emblematic of the criminal justice system. Hell, even our Vice President has some problematic instances from her career as a prosecutor. The initial leniency that was given to the men who were found guilty of murdering Ahmaud Arbery, however, is quite an example of prosecutorial misconduct.

Those three men — despite murdering Arbery in February — were not charged until May 2020 after footage of the encounter was leaked to social media. The misconduct was so egregious that the original prosecutor, Jackie Johnson, is currently facing criminal charges. Gregory McMichael was a former employee of Johnson, which is why she chose to recuse herself from the case; but not until after she had allegedly obstructed police from arresting Travis McMichael, Gregory’s son, and showed Gregory special treatment during the investigation. She also failed to disclose that the prosecutor who replaced her, George Barnhill, had already been involved in the case.

Just like it’s rare to see a prosecutor face accountability, it’s also rare to see police officers be criminally charged when they use excessive force. However, as the case of Kim Potter illustrates, it’s not impossible. Potter is charged with manslaughter for fatally shooting 20-year-old Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in Minneapolis earlier this year. Wright was pulled over for expired tags and during the stop, he attempted to get back into his vehicle, which prompted the officers to escalate things to the point of Potter threatening to tase him several times before shooting him once through the chest. Her claim is that she mistook her firearm for her taser. Even if that’s true, that’s quite a mistake for an experienced police officer, especially one who was the president of her police union. She was also training the other officer at the scene on the night of the shooting. Her trial started earlier this week on Tuesday, November 30.

Another case I’d like to touch on that didn’t have the opportunity to go to trial is that of Jacob Chansley; also known as the “QAnon Shaman” who basically became the mascot of the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021. It should go without saying that I don’t condone his actions or agree with his politics, but that doesn’t take away from a conversation that should be had about the sentence he received last month. Chansley is serving nearly three and a half years in prison after taking a plea deal; had he refused, he would’ve faced 20 years instead.

Regardless of how you feel about this particular case, the fact that the tactic of threatening defendants with drastically larger sentences — for choosing to enact their constitutional right to a trial by jury — even exists, is a problem in and of itself and deserves discussion. If you don’t believe in criminal justice reform for your political enemies, or for unsympathetic characters, then you can’t claim you really care about it for anyone.

All of the aforementioned trials are worthy of our attention, and I think it’s a shame that the corporate media politicized the Kyle Rittenhouse case to the point of distracting the general public from these other stories. The one recent case that I believe deserves particularly more attention than it’s receiving, however, is that of Ghislaine Maxwell; the long-time employee and partner of Jeffery Epstein, the disgraced billionaire financier who allegedly killed himself in 2019 while in custody for charges of sex trafficking.

Whether the official story of Epstein’s demise is true or not is up for debate, to the point of “Epstein didn’t kill himself” becoming a common saying on the internet since his death. Because of that, the defense for her case has claimed that Maxwell is essentially a proxy for the Epstein trial that never happened. That claim doesn’t really hold water though, considering the fact that there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Maxwell was a willing participant in the criminal activity.

Her trial started on November 29, Monday of this week, but it’s not being broadcast to the general public. Though it’s true that the judge for this trial, Alison J. Nathan, called certain details of this case too “sensational and impure” for the public to hear, that’s not the reason cameras aren’t allowed in the courtroom; they’ve been barred from federal courts for quite some time. Maxwell is charged with six counts, all involving the sexual exploitation of minors, to which she has pleaded not guilty.

This case has very serious implications, considering the long list of influential figures accused of being involved and the severity of the alleged crimes. In fact, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and Prince Andrew were just some of the high-profile individuals that were said to have flown on Epstein’s private jet dubbed the “Lolita Express” during testimony from Lawrence Paul Visoski Jr., one of Epstein’s former pilots on the first day of the trial.

Regardless of what level of speculation you subscribe to about this story, I think we can all agree that it’s important to discover the honest truth of what really happened. Let’s hope that truth comes to light as this trial proceeds. Only one of four accusers, known only as Jane to maintain her privacy, has testified so far. She said that Epstein sexually abused her when she was 14-years-old and that Maxwell facilitated the abuse by showing her how Epstein liked to be massaged and sometimes even took part in the sexual activity. The defense attorney, Laura Menninger, tried to use Jane’s current career as an actress to undermine her testimony because she’s able to “cry on command”.

The first week of this trial has wrapped up but there is much more time to go. There were several important takeaways from this week, some of which I mentioned here. However, to get the full scope of what took place this week, I would recommend everyone take some time to research the case for themselves. This trial deserves consistent attention from the general public, and it’s our job to make sure we stay up to date with any new developments in the coming weeks.

As I highlighted throughout this article, we can’t trust the corporate media to always inform us of what is really taking place, or to not distract us from other stories that also need to be heard. The next time there’s a story in the news that won’t seem to go away, consider the possibility that instead of presenting basic facts, the media may be using certain stories to stoke division and accrue traffic to their site or views on their channel. Keep in mind that just because a story isn’t constantly in the news, that doesn’t mean it’s not newsworthy.

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