Protesters in Minneapolis, and, for that matter, throughout the country and across the seas, signaled through shouting, jumping, carrying signs and in some instances vandalism that a jury had darned well better find Derek Chauvin guilty in his trial for murder. It did.
But what I hope, pray and believe is that the jurors relied on what seemed to me firm evidence and strong arguments in reaching their conclusion, not out of fear of being beaten up, of enduring, unending, ruined reputations or something worse. Trials should be based on rule of law, not on popular sentiment, politics or the idea that the end justifies the means.
The outcome may have all kinds of implications, but what was at stake in the event itself was a human being entitled to basic rights, fairness and a system of justice that would otherwise be a system of injustice. In a larger view, there are also the issues of needed judicial and police reform that done the wrong way could nevertheless cost lives all over the country.
Chauvin, who is white, had startled the nation after he and several other police officers had first struggled last May with George Floyd, a Black man accused of passing counterfeit money in a store.
