The Gross Injustice of Kim Potter’s Conviction

 The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

The verdict was meant to reflect not the law and the evidence, but the passionate narrative to which the ruling powers of Minnesota subscribe.  

"When I was eleven and twelve, I was gripped by the stunning injustice of segregation. I read To Kill a Mockingbird and Black Like Me. I saw the photos and heard the stories of the separate but never equal accommodations in buses, at water fountains, and in schools. I learned of lynchings, of trials never conducted before a jury of one’s peers, of guilt being determined by skin color, not by evidence. I learned of the Scottsboro Boys and the mockery made of the Constitution and the law and their requirements for due process. The segregationist community desired to send a message, and that, not fact, not justice, ruled the courts and dictated the verdicts. 

"As I grasped it, as it was understood in my family, this was the same sort of thing as we Jews had been subjected to again and again. To stand against it was the signal moral duty of anyone who loved freedom, and the single greatest moral issue testing America as the place offering liberty and justice for all. We fought against such injustice without, fighting and defeating Nazism, and now we had to defeat the more insidious enemy within, one that discredited and befouled the American legacy the way no external foe could ever succeed in doing.

"What made segregation wrong? As I saw it then and as I see it now, sixty years later, it valued race over truth, race over justice, race over decency and compassion. It reduces and diminishes humanity, considering the only truly meaningful thing to be certain generally irrelevant genetic traits. Have those genes and you have political rights; if not, you don’t. Have them, you have a fair trial, with the case decided by the facts and by the law, fairly interpreted and applied. If not, your verdict will reflect the demands of the passions of the ruling group, not the evidence or the law." . . .