(Sorry, I am not down with this just yet. There is still a dead child who got no justice.)
I do not believe they tried to win. Is that so preposterous to believe on my part?
Why?
I read one comment here yesterday that focused on the veracity of trial attorneys in any DA’s office and how they always want to win, and how it is crazy and beyond-the-pale-fainting-couch-material to think that any prosecutor would not really try.
In my own comment, I replied that I feel personal beliefs and social pressure would easily trump career ambition in a case like this one. I likened it, jokingly, to ‘Prosecutor’ Brad Pitt in “Sleepers”.
I mean, when the DA in Sanford did finally stage the trial, they allowed prejudicial video, they used one of their precious juror objections on A POTENTIAL AFRICAN AMERICAN JUROR, and among so many other fuckups, they lost. They didn’t even get manslaughter, and this when a juror said “his heart was in the right place but things went horribly wrong” (That smells like manslaughter to me. But nothing???)
But thinking about it last night, I didn’t go far enough. I looked at the Brooklyn joke of a DA, Charles Hynes, and synopses of the cases that his department has tried, and which cases he decided not to try. I remembered how the DA in Sanford Florida did not even decide to bring charges until it was necessitated by public pressure.
It is not that a particular attorney in a particular DA’s office has a personal belief system, or is a racist, or feels local social pressure or national social pressure, and puts on a lousy trial. It is far more insidious and obvious.
The DA’s office in any jurisdiction is inherently political. It is a political office, much like the AG, but on a local level, with more local tentacles. The politics of Sanford Florida are well known. The DA’s office in Sanford, left to its own devices, did not see fit, nor want to, bring any charges at all.
Why then, when they actually put on the case, should we now believe they wanted to win?
Why in the fuck should we assume that a political office in a racist district would be impartial and fair?
Do they simply deserve a pass and a “oh they would never do that!” from us, simply because the act of not trying to win seems unconscionable and beyond all reason?
Shit, people do the unconscionable every day now. I believe the Sanford DA's office did as well. And they cannot be forgiven, for father, they knew exactly what in hell they were doing.