Randy Evans is executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com.
Most people go through life never stepping foot inside a courtroom. Most people, that is, except for attorneys, judges, journalists, the few of us chosen to be jurors, and an even more select group, those who are accused of crimes.
If I were talking now with my dear parents, may they rest in peace, I would quickly assure them that my many days spent in courtrooms have been in a professional capacity, not as a defendant trying to avoid the slammer.
As a reporter and later as the boss of reporters, I have had an up-close vantage point to watch our court system as it works. I claim no special expertise. But 50 years in a ringside seat on the judiciary have given me perspective worth sharing.
I have watched as prosecutors and defense lawyers have carried out their roles in this fundamental part of a democratic society. I have seen how judges and juries approach the solemn duties we entrust to them.
I have encountered a multitude of defendants who insisted they were innocent, the criminal charges were trumped up, and they were victims of biased prosecutors, crooked judges, or incompetent jurors. There have been other defendants whom juries found not guilty, leaving people close to the victim outraged.
Far too many people—including those who should know it instinctively—have overlooked one inescapable fact:
Just because someone we like professes their innocence but is convicted does not make the American judicial system corrupt or rigged. Criminal defendants will rarely rise to applaud the decision of jurors who found them guilty.
Likewise, just because another defendant is found not guilty, contrary to the beliefs of the prosecutor and the victim’s friends and relatives, it is not a sign our criminal justice system is incompetent, crooked, or a threat to our nation’s freedoms.
The entire justice system is built on people exercising their best judgment in a legal process that puts defendants’ and victims’ freedoms on the line. Sometimes, judges and juries make mistakes. Sometimes, we disagree with a jury’s findings. Sometimes, appellate courts will step in and correct an error. Other times, they do not.
But the lasting harm comes not from an outcome we disagree with. The lasting harm comes if we allow people who should know better to undermine the trust and the credibility of the judicial system with wild, baseless accusations.
Attorney General Brenna Bird should know this. As Iowa’s top law enforcement official, prosecutors on her staff are deciding every week why someone should be charged with a crime or why someone else should not. Her prosecutors are arguing before jurors in high-profile cases why the accused should be found guilty and have their liberty taken away.
Not everyone in those cases agrees with the wisdom of the prosecutors. But few who might disagree ever stand in front of a bank of microphones and assert that overzealous prosecutors are trampling on a cornerstone of American democracy.
But that is what General Bird has done with her accusation that a high-profile case in New York City is a sham and is about nothing other than politics. Twelve ordinary jurors spoke with a unanimous voice at the end of that case, convicting Donald Trump on all 34 counts of falsifying business records. Bird quickly posted on her social media,
Today is a dark day in American history.
Case in point why politics should have absolutely no place in prosecutions.
The American people, not a court, should decide who the next leader of the free world will be. President Donald J. Trump deserves better.
As I have witnessed in numerous cases here in Iowa, there always are people who applaud a jury’s verdict, while others may criticize the jurors’ decision.
I doubt General Bird would welcome the Manhattan district attorney coming to Iowa, standing in front of a gaggle of reporters, and announcing to the world that the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation was wrong to ignore the need for a court-approved search warrant before state agents scooped up cellphone data about sports wagers made by University of Iowa and Iowa State University athletes.
Forty years ago, friends of an Iowa sheriff were not keen on the decision by the attorney general at the time to bring bribery charges against him. Nor were those friends particularly enamored of Iowa’s judicial system when a jury found the sheriff guilty.
Thirty years ago, many in Iowa were stunned when a mom was acquitted on murder charges in the death of her newborn—whom she said was abducted from her car by an unknown stalker. The public reaction was heightened by testimony that a kidnapping note found in her car had been pieced together, word by word, from a magazine with the mother’s name on the address label.
Plenty of people disagreed with the outcomes of those cases and many others, but no one made wild allegations back then that Iowa’s criminal justice system was corrupt or mired in politics.
When people in positions of respect and authority make such allegations now about another case, they undermine trust and confidence in one more institution of government—and they do so all in the name of politics.
Respect cannot be reserved only for those times when we agree with the outcome.
Top photo of Attorney General Brenna Bird with Donald Trump was posted on Bird’s political Facebook page on January 15, 2024 (the day of the Iowa caucuses).
4 Comments
Best lines.
Randy Evans for governor.
His best lines⬇️⬇️
But the lasting harm comes not from an outcome we disagree with. The lasting harm comes if we allow people who should know better to undermine the trust and the credibility of the judicial system with wild, baseless accusations.
Attorney General Brenna Bird should know this. As Iowa’s top law enforcement official, prosecutors on her staff are deciding every week why someone should be charged with a crime or why someone else should not. Her prosecutors are arguing before jurors in high-profile cases why the accused should be found guilty and have their liberty taken away.
Not everyone in those cases agrees with the wisdom of the prosecutors. But few who might disagree ever stand in front of a bank of microphones and assert that overzealous prosecutors are trampling on a cornerstone of American democracy.
But that is what General Bird has done with her accusation that a high-profile case in New York City is a sham and is about nothing other than politics. Twelve ordinary jurors spoke with a unanimous voice at the end of that case, convicting Donald Trump on all 34 counts of falsifying business records. Bird quickly posted on her social media,
Gerald Ott Mon 3 Jun 1:10 PM
Aghast...
Des Moines in the 1960’s was once a coveted “test market” for companies seeking customer reaction to new products. Lately, the products being tested are bizarre assertions as heard from Iowa’s attorney general Breanna Bird. I don’t know who delivered these assertions for her to parrot, but as an Iowan, it’s an embarrassment.
The Iowa Department of Education has a new director who, on her own credentials, would not qualify to be a public school teacher. Next, I have to witness Iowa’s NUMBER ONE law enforcement official standing in solidarity with DJT who not 72 hours later would be a 34x convicted felon. (…walks away shaking head..)
dbmarin Tue 4 Jun 7:14 PM
A real disgrace...
Supposedly, this woman is qualified lawyer. As a lawyer, she supposedly understands how the law works. She supposedly is to evaluate the evidence, determine charges based on what the evidence proves and prosecutes based on that evidence and those charges.
Instead, she has spent her entire tenure as Iowa’s AG filing lawsuits based entirely on her politics. Then she decides to fly to New York to stand with a bunch of equally morally challenged fluffers who were there just to make The Rapist Donald Trump feel better.
She is a very poor representative for the State of Iowa.
Now, she has decided to ignore the charges, the verdict of the trial jury, and then declare it a sham.
Remember, her re-election is in November 2026.
I hope the people of Iowa make a better choice the next time around.
Anti-MAGA Tue 4 Jun 9:57 PM
The Republican strategy
is to foment distrust in the rule of law, win the next election, and become be the world’s third autocratic superpower, joining Russia and China. 22nd Amendment (two term limit) will no longer be operative. Trump would die in office.
European allies, Canada, and many other democratic nations are making contingency plans now.
This comment comes late and is gonna be too damn long, but I’m gonna let it fly anyway. Apologies…
A sports talk radio host made some post-conviction comments that were on point. From an online article on that:
That’s not to mention those who have already pled guilty to other crimes related to Trump’s attempted coup. Many others are awaiting trial. And still more have been indicted in recent days.
But there’s greater numbers still — the hundreds of people listed on the (still growing) one hundred and one page DOJ document listing sentences handed down to people for participating in the January 6 sacking of the capitol:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/media/1331746/dl?inline
Some were jury trials. Some were bench trials. Some trials had a Trump or other Republican appointed judge. Some had a Democratic appointed judge.
The convicted people were following what Donald Trump had told them to do.
They’ve had their lives ruined because of it. Some already had rap sheets before January 6. Others were not inherently bad, but they’d bought into the lies. They thought they were doing the right thing. They were conned. A few of them understand that now. (I remember reading about one convicted woman saying, “I was in a cult.”) Some still don’t get it.
A few have received terrorism enhancements at sentencing. Their leader was Donald Trump. Donald Trump was a domestic terrorist leader while United States President.
As a private citizen he’s still practicing stochastic terrorism, with social media posts targeting specific people. Several have led to threats of violence, and in some cases actual violence.
Thus the gag orders in his various trials. And Brenna Bird filed at least one amicus brief in support of his stochastic terrorism tactics. Thankfully, judge(s) mostly said in effect, “No. Hell no. We’ve already seen what that leads to.”
So, Trump fucked a porn star, and with the help of Michael Cohen, broke campaign finance laws by falsifying business records to cover up fucking the porn star.
Michael Cohen was convicted years ago in his trial pertaining to that same episode. How many Republican politicians said the Cohen trial was rigged and a sham?
Sure, it was a political story, a political crime, and thus a ‘political trial.’ But not a sham. If anything, this second conviction in the same episode only lends MORE credence to the idea that, ‘Yeah, that’s how it went down. And it was a crime.’
Does defending that behavior align with Brenna Bird’s Christian family values beliefs?
Can you imagine what it would be like to be fully or mostly aware of all of the above facts, and be a parent, sibling, or adult offspring of Brenna? That would be tough to wrestle with mentally and emotionally.
The closest thing I’ve experienced to that is having an alcoholic family member and witnessing some (but more than enough) of the bad that goes with that. Intervention did not work. I don’t regret trying, though, despite the failure.
One day it got so bad that another relative of mine gave our alcoholic family member a verbal dressing down the likes of which I hadn’t seen in the adult world for a long, long time, if ever. Including, “You’d be living under a bridge if it weren’t for your wife! So if I ever hear you use that language on her again, that’s the last time you will ever step foot in my house.” There was more. It was powerful.
But it was ultimately useless as well.
Nevertheless, I would love to witness someone address Brenna face to face with the equivalent forceful truth of those words that day in my family. Even if — again, useless. On rare occasions, there can be a breakthrough made with a given person. But she’s likely lost to the point of no recovery. As are a troubling and dangerously high number of Republicans almost everywhere. It’s just sad to watch.
(There are still some very decent Republicans around in public service, but the longer this madness goes on, the greater likelihood is we’ll lose it all, and there will be zero room for truth anywhere in the party.)
I am so grateful my dad is not alive to witness these in-the-gutter Republican politicians aiming for their new Reich.
Fly_Fly__Fly_Away Wed 5 Jun 2:28 PM