A Redundant Prosecution, Star Tribune Edition
8th May 2021
Scott Johnson at PowerLine.
The Star Tribune drew on the work of three reporters and its collaboration with “Frontline” (through its Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) for Andy Mannix’s story on the federal indictment of Derek Chauvin and his three former colleagues on federal civil rights charges in the death of George Floyd.
With all hands on deck, I thought the Star Tribune (and its collaborators) might find someone to comment on the redundancy of the federal prosecution or otherwise to provide the rationale, but no. The Star Tribune team finds nothing to see here.
Students of pattern recognition may detect a certain sameness to the theme of the quotes offered on the federal case (not to mention the ancient hatred for which both Keith Ellison and Al Sharpton have both fanned the flames).
Basically, Federal ‘civil rights’ laws give the government a way around the Constitutional bar against trying somebody twice for the same crime, as well as a second bite of the apple when the first trial doesn’t go the way they want it to. This would have certainly struck the Founders as the sort of tyranny against which the American Revolution was fought.