And Justice for All, Part II

This post is a follow-up to the one I published after the acquittal on all charges of Kyle Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse, as you will recall, was found not guilty of murder, attempted murder, and recklessly endangering safety. The jury found that he acted in self-defense on all counts.

That earlier post recounted the trial, most of which I watched. It debunked numerous fallacies propagated by the media and internet trolls. It addressed the media coverage of the verdict, and some of the protests that followed.

This post will address a part of that reaction, drawing an important parallel. But before we dive in, let me first say this: I will probably be branded a racist for posting it. That's okay; pretty much everyone who dares disagree with the Left these days is branded a racist. And you needn't disagree with them regarding race. All roads lead there. Don't like the infrastructure bill? You're a racist. Upset about inflation? You're a racist. Opposed to wind turbines? Oh, you're definitely a racist.

But I'm sure I'll be labeled a racist just for agreeing with the verdict. Yet my agreement with it has nothing to do with the fact that Kyle Rittenhouse is white. (Again, so were the three men he shot.) It has everything to do with the facts of the case and the rule of law. For the record, in spite of the fact that Kyle Rittenhouse was asked to come to Kenosha - where several of his relatives live - to help protect a friend's business from rioters, I don't know that I necessarily agree with his decision to go there that night. One brave young man trying to stop a bunch of thugs from destroying property in a riot of that magnitude is like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.

Especially when the feckless Governor of Wisconsin rejected the President's offer to send in the National Guard to protect Kenosha's businesses.

So while I agree with the verdict, I don't necessarily agree with young Mr. Rittenhouse's judgement on that day. I don't know that I'd have advised him to go there. Yes, there were many people who went there to help protect property, and yes, some of them were armed. I don't know that I'd have advised any of them to do what they did. (Conversely, I definitely wouldn't have advised any of the rioters to go and do what they did, and if they hadn't been there, there would have been no need for anyone to go and protect property.)

Further, I've also been following the trial of the men who killed Ahmaud Arbery. Admittedly, I haven't followed it as closely, in part because it hasn't sucked the air out of the national consciousness the way the Rittenhouse trial did. However, from what I know of that case - from what I recall of the information available at the time of the shooting, and from what I've seen of the trial coverage thus far - I expect that the two white men who killed Arbery, a black man, will be found guilty of murder, and if they are, I will be in agreement with that verdict as well. That still probably won't be enough to allow me to turn in my racist card.

With that out of the way, let's recall part of the media's reaction to the Rittenhouse verdict. The mainstream (read: left-wing) media made it about race, of course. They claimed that it set back racial equality. (It wasn't just the media, by the way: Vice President Kamala Harris, who has turned out to be the worst pick since Ryan Leaf, said the same thing.) Part of the argument behind this was the tried-and-true "If Kyle Rittenhouse had been a young black man, the verdict would have been different" mantra. Never mind that, true or not, that assertion has naught to do with the Rittenhouse case.

Still, let's put it to the test.

Let me introduce you to a young man you've probably never heard of (I hadn't until this morning): Andrew Coffee IV. Coffee is a 27-year-old black man from Gifford, Florida. Note that the facts I present herewith come from a variety of news sources - I did not follow Coffee's trial, because to the best of my knowledge, it was not televised, nor did it receive widespread media attention.

In March, 2017, the Indian River County Sheriff's Office sent a SWAT team to Coffee's home. They suspected his father of dealing drugs, and they arrested his father at the front door after a brief struggle. Coffee testified that he was asleep at the time of the raid, and did not hear the deputies announce themselves. He never claimed they didn't announce themselves, just that he didn't hear them. He claimed that he first became aware that they were present when they broke out his bedroom window with a pole that subsequently detonated a flash-bang device.

Seeing the pole protruding through the window and having heard the bang, Coffee thought it was a rifle and that he was being robbed, and he fired a .45-caliber pistol out of the bedroom window two or three times.

Deputies returned fire, shooting more than a dozen rounds toward the bedroom window. At least one of those rounds hit Coffee's girlfriend who was lying in bed, 21-year-old Alteria Woods, killing her.

An earlier investigation cleared the officers involved in the incident. Coffee was on trial for one count of second-degree felony murder in the death of Woods (the argument being that his actions caused her death, though unintentionally, hence the second-degree tag), three counts of attempted first-degree murder of a law enforcement officer by discharging a firearm, and one count of "shooting or throwing a deadly missile."

I could find no mention of the racial makeup of the jury. However, on the same day that Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted ...

Coffee was found not guilty on all five counts.

Now, it should be noted that he was found guilty on a sixth count: possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. That one would be kind of hard to get out of; the facts of the case were that he did have a prior felony conviction; he was in possession of a firearm; and that is against Florida law.

But the fact remains that a young black man, with a prior felony conviction; living in a drug house (the raid turned up marijuana, crack cocaine, Hydromorphone, and oxycodone, ostensibly his father's); in illegal possession of a firearm; was exonerated by a jury that found he believed his life was in danger, and was acting in self-defense by firing the gun, even though ultimately someone died in the exchange of fire, and officers' lives were put in danger. Those odds would leave most in the liberal media to assume that he'd be found guilty, but he was not.

Again, justice was served, and our American jury system worked.

Now granted, it doesn't always work this way. But maybe, just maybe, justice is more color-blind than the media and the liberal politicians would have us believe.

You know what's different about the Coffee case?

• No MSNBC reporters followed the jury bus.
• There was no widespread media hysteria over the case in general, nor biased media reaction to the verdict. (For all its flaws, I doubt you'll see Fox News lambasting the decision as a travesty of justice.)
• There was no reporting that I could find of protests, let alone riots, in Gifford, Florida, by angry mobs who were upset with the verdict - much less in Chicago, New York, or Portland. (I suppose if news gets out of the guilty verdict on the firearm possession charge, the bored white kids in those cities may go bust a few windows, but with the supply chain what it is these days, the good Nikes are probably on a container ship in the Pacific.)
• Joe Biden isn't talking about the Coffee case. (If you asked him to comment on it, he'd probably think you were talking about an ice cream flavor.)

Back to the beginning of this post. I'll go back on record, and say that I agree with the verdict in this case, just as I agreed with the verdict in the Rittenhouse case. Although there were no winners in either matter, our legal system exists for a reason, and while it is not without its flaws, it has stood the test of time in providing justice for all, nearly all of the time.