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.

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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).