After the Rittenhouse verdict, obviously there were conflicts between people who think that he got away with murder and smart people. During the discussions (if you can call them that) a lot of the "Hang Kyle!" people were trying to fall back to the O.J. case in order to...I don't know...prove that juries can be wrong.
After the Kim Potter verdict, it was a lot less polarizing while still being contentious, we had a lot of the same. Only, I noticed that a lot of the very same people who would evoke the O.J. verdict were saying that Potter was guilty because the jury said so and would say some rather mean things to me when I said that I thought that the jury was wrong.
It's hard to justify the position that juries are always right. Juries are made up of humans and humans fuck up. Juries are also not made of legal experts or people who even have a passive interest in law. Some jurors are eventually revealed to have agendas. Some jurors let their emotions get the best of them.
The thing is, it's one thing to acknowledge that juries get things wrong. It's quite another to think that pointing out that juries sometimes get things wrong actually bolsters your argument.
The only similarity between Rittenhouse and O.J. is that they were both acquitted of murder charges. O.J. did it. Rittenhouse was so obviously innocent from day one that my only concern (which was a big concern) for fifteen months was that he would get a jury of not very smart people, anti-gun activists, people who say that it's never justifiable for an armed person to shoot an unarmed person without thinking that through logically, and people who think that open carrying in an open carry state qualifies as provocation. I'm not going to point to the jury's verdict to try to bolster my argument that he was always innocent. I'm right. The jury (thank God) was also right. If you disagree with me or the jury on this, you're wrong.
Kim Potter's case was more complicated. I started off agreeing with Potter that she was going to jail. Then I looked at the evidence more and I read the law and how it distinguishes between negligence and criminal negligence. After I did the work I realized that she was innocent. The verdict doesn't change my view. In fact, the reality that so few people are even willing to understand the concept of mens rea makes me more convinced of her innocence. I'm still not going to evoke O.J. to try to show people that juries can get it wrong.
As I was saying before, these conflicting arguments were often coming out of the same mouths and being typed on the same keyboards. If you're one of those people (and, if you're reading this, you know who you are), you really have to reexamine your moral views. The only way you can talk about juries in these two cases in such contradictory ways is if you believe that who goes to prison and who doesn't should be decided by who you don't like and who you don't like rather than the facts.
The law should be about the facts.
I could be wrong about Potter. I'm absolutely not wrong about Rittenhouse. Either way, O.J. has nothing to do with those cases. We can talk all we want about fixing our criminal justice system; but, one thing that you can do personally as a potential future is pull your head out of your own ass. Learn how to look at facts dispassionately. If you're going to voice an opinion about a high profile trial, take five minutes to calm yourself down, look at the evidence that we have, and then maybe read the damn law.
We are all capable of doing this. We are also all capable of moral and intellectual consistency if we work at it hard enough.