On September 15, 2022, Calvin Ushery was clearly shown on a surveillance video as he stomped 68-year-old Chang Suh, a Korean-American jewelry shop owner and hit him over the head at least a dozen times, twice with a hammer. Ushery then stole about $100,000 in merchandise. The evidence, including the video, was indisputable and beyond rebuttal, so his lawyer argued for jury nullification, slyly, because in Delaware, like all but one state (New Hampshire), arguing that a jury should ignore the law is an ethics violation. He said the video would doubtlessly raise “a lot of emotion,” but argued that the jurors’ revulsion shouldn’t be focused on the defendant.
Oh. What? Who then? Surely not his victim, who after a year is still not recovered from the beating (that’s him in a shot from the video). Oh come on—you know the answer by now, don’t you? The emotion should be aimed at the systemic racism that made Ushery into the dangerous enemy of civilization that he is. He needs diversity, equity and inclusion, not punishment. What are we, barbarians?
And that defense message worked! The jury was hung, and a mistrial declared. In the eyes of the law, despite video evidence that he committed a brutal crime, Calvin Ushery is technically innocent.
Elie Mystal is surely thrilled. The racist, anti-police, anti-Constitution Marxist editor for “The Nation,” also a frequent visitor to MSNBC (naturally), argued in 2016 that black jurors should always vote to acquit black defendants, no matter how guilty they may be and no matter how horrible the crime.
“Maybe it’s time for black people to use the same tool white people have been using to defy a system they do not consent to: jury nullification,” Mystal wrote in an op-ed. “White juries regularly refuse to convict or indict cops for murder. White juries refuse to convict vigilantes who murder black children. White juries refuse to convict other white people for property crimes. Maybe it’s time minorities got in the game?” he continued. “Black people lucky enough to get on a jury could use that power to acquit any person charged with a crime against white men and white male institutions.”
Well, that’s our Elie! His degrees from Harvard and Harvard Law School didn’t imbue him with enough critical reasoning skill to overcome his hatred of anyone who isn’t black, and to see his his “burn, baby, burn” nostrums for societal improvement as the garbage that they are. True, Mystal was only hoping that blacks could abuse, rob, rape and kill white people, but nothing in his op-ed ruled out using jury nullification to let minorities—like Mr. Suh—be victimized without justice too. Black criminals’ lives matter more than the lives of law-abiding citizens, which is one prime reason why so many cities are descending into permanent chaos. Over-incarceration, don’t you know.
The Ushery verdict has so far escaped coverage in the mainstream media.
Frank Drebin would like a word…
Ethics Alarms 
Isn’t that the Clarence Darrow defense?
It was certainly one of his favorites.
Isn’t it an argument you have spoken highly of?
Well, as you know, it depends. The jury always has the power to decide that, under certain circumstances, enforcing a law is unjust…John Peter Zenger and all that. That power is a crucial safety valve, but misused, and it results in anarchy. Darrow used the argument to brilliant effect in the Sweet case. He also used it irresponsibly to get labor terrorists acquitted. Darrow is a main reason the argument is ground for a mistrial and ethics sanctions in most of the country.
I wonder if Elie Mystal would think the same way if he were standing in Chang Suh’s shoes on September 15, 2022. Frankly, it might be difficult for him to cogently think about anything at this point had he been there.
Mystal is a sadistic buffoon.
If the justice system can’t be trusted to deliver justice, people will take it upon themselves to provide such justice. The vigilantes will multiply exponentially. Who needs civilization, though, really? I’m sure anarchy is much less systemically racist.
NP
I was going to ask what happens when the victim’s family hunts down and kills the perpetrator who inflicted the injuries? If a family cannot get justice we can expect vigilantism.
People seem to think they can eliminate cause and effect by ignoring it hard enough. If they just keep saying the same false thing long enough, it will eventually make it true. Cats will start loving dogs, the weather will always be sunny and warm, reality will cease to exist. Personally, I don’t think reality can be reordered by simply ordering it to reorder itself. If it could I would have won the lottery about 12 times now without ever having to purchase a ticket.
In the immortal words of Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist of my Beloved Rush,
“you can twist perceptions
reality won’t budge
you can raise objections
I will be the judge
and the jury
“I’ll give it due reflection
watching from the fence
give the jury direction
based on the evidence
I, the jury”
From “Show Don’t Tell” (1989), Rush, “Presto” album.
“…use the same tool white people have been using…”
The operative words being “have been”, as in “occasionally, in some places, over half a century or more ago”. That works both ways.; is it really where the likes of that imbecile Mystal want to go?
and yet, the same side pushing for decarceration, the same side accusing the cops of habitually hunting down and gunning down unarmed Black men, the same side accusing the criminal justice system of being systematically racist…
..is the same side that advocates for stricter gun control laws which would be enforced by these very same police in this very same system.
Here was Elie Mystal himself.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/supreme-court-gun-rifle/
Reading through the article, his beef with a Supreme Court ruling overturning the Sullivan law is not that street thugs who mug people, nor the gangbanger who gun down children in front of schools, will be more easily be able to commit these crimes or get away with them.
His complaint is about “unleashing trigger-happy vigilantes onto our streets and subways”.
He also complained about how the ruling “would take the discretion out of the system and basically mean that anybody can get a permit if they fill out a form”.
Now, three years agowe were told that cops were violent, inherent, irredeemable racists.
We were told that America systemically perpetuates racism.
And now Mystal wants to trust these same people with that discretion?
Mystal was a breath of fresh air in the early 2010s. What the hell happened?
My only guess is he became a liberal version of someone like Tucket Carlson, who used to be an apt observer–even when I disagreed with him, which was most of the time. But he found he could be more famous (and command a higher salary) if he became a parody of himself. I doubt that particular quest is a specifically conservative concern. Any other ideas?
I actually believe he went nuts, Curmie. I used to follow him on Above the Law, and you could see the deterioration in real time. He became more and more frustrated with law and politics, emerged as a full-on racist. Opinions that once might have been intended as hyperbole began sounding like he meant them, and suddenly he snapped. He’s never returned to Earth. He just as easily might have grabbed a machete and run amuck in the streets, I guess.
He’s like Amiri Baraka the elder, who was a poet and playwright of some talent, then he drank the black supremacist Kool-Aid. The thing is, once you drink that Kool-Aid, it’s very hard to find an antidote. I don’t know if he snapped, but eventually he deteriorated so far he hit a red line. Mystal actually posted an article in which he talked about computer game a neighborhood or something like that. He said he moved all of the prepackaged characters out and added only those that were sufficiently black, liberal, or both to suit him. He also said that in that game Sasha Obama grew up and married his grandson. He himself is buried under the swing in their backyard. I’ve talked about how what writers produce gives you a window into their thinking. If the writer is at all smart or worthwhile, you will at least wonder what exactly he was aiming at and have to make your own interpretation. Whatever you might think of JK Rowling’s politics, at least when she says characters in her books are based on people she knew in real life, she doesn’t say who. Most riders are also wise enough not to indicate if characters are based on them. There is something really creepy about reading a story and knowing is essentially the authors itself. For example, JRR Tolkien’s greatest love story, although I don’t consider it all that great, it turns out was based on his own courting of and marriage to his wife Edith. We know this because after he and his wife had passed away they were buried in graves that bore the names of the two lovers from that story. Some people might think that was cute or romantic. I think it’s somewhere between creepy and self-indulgent. He was not some epic level hero, and she certainly wasn’t the most beautiful woman ever in the world. To imply that was creepy. Mystal doesn’t even imply.