Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Plea Bargaining Away January 6th

 



So Buffalo Man, aka QAnon Shaman, has met reality in the form of a jail and now he realizes there are grown up consequences to his role playing game which involved invading the People's House on January 6. 

We see this sort of thing all the time in hospitals, and I'm told it's true on battlefields, where the big, tough guys with all the swagger are suddenly faced with the reality of actual pain or life threatening circumstance and suddenly are weeping and crying for their mothers.

All that is easy to understand.



What is difficult to understand is why the prosecutors play along.

If I understand the idea of a plea bargain is to free up the court, i.e. the judges, and the prosecutors from all the effort, trouble, expense of a trial.

But in this case, is a trial, a public proceeding with witnesses and testimony and judges and juries not exactly what is required here? 

What are these prosecutors being paid for, if not to protect society?



As the  trial of the killer of George Floyd demonstrated, there is something therapeutic about the right kind of trial for the right kind of criminal. 

"Show trials" have got a bad name: The idea is the verdict is preordained. But the show is the point. Public opprobrium is the idea.

You may say, "But what if the jury lets him off?"

Well, that is a chance you take. But with the right venue, the likelihood this guy will walk is low.

The Nuremberg Trials were about this. 

Did they plea bargain with Herman Goering or any other Nazi at the trials of those men who brought mayhem and atrocities to Europe?

I want to see Buffalo Man on TV while witnesses testify to what they saw him do.



Lot of work, sure, but nothing compared to the work policeman and soldiers put in every day. Those white collared prosecutors can earn their pay and bring these miscreants to trial the way they are supposed to do.


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