Karmelo Anthony, 19, was convicted yesterday of first-degree murder in the fatal stabbing of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf. It took the jury three hours to reach a verdict. The jury then sentenced Anthony to 35 years in the penitentiary (juries determine sentencing in Texas). The felon will be in his mid-fifties by the time he gets out of prison (unless authorities release him earlier, which they should not do). Social media is alive with the right black voices condemning the verdict. A great injustice was done to Anthony. Metcaff’s corpse be damned.
The headline of a Dallas Morning News op-ed, by Anna Offit, the morning of the day that witnessed a just verdict, blared: “Karmelo Anthony Trial: Legitimacy of the jury is in doubt.” For whom is the legitimacy of the jury in doubt? Offit tells the reader: “Justice needs juries that reflect diverse communities.” So there were no black jurors. But do juries need to reflect diverse communities? Wouldn’t diversity politicize the process? Certainly, that is what Offit desires. And she is not alone.
“As a law professor who has spent the past decade studying prosecutorial strategy and the jury system in different regions of the United States, I have learned that many prosecutors are wary of empaneling certain professionals—teachers, social workers, psychologists—who might be sympathetic to a young defendant,” she writes. Offit wants to weaponize the justice system by empaneling those whom she believes are more likely to empathize with the defendant. This is a woman who sees the world in tribal lines. But don’t worry about that, Offit hastens to add: “Of course, the ‘reasonable person’ is a legal fiction.”
“In the Anthony trial, the situation is particularly stark: a jury without a single Black [sic] juror will determine what constitutes an objective standard for reasonableness—one that should apply to a Black [sic] teenager—based on their personal experiences and beliefs.” Yet she just told us that there is no such thing as a “reasonable person.” (Yes, I know she means by that.) How does the racial identities of the jurors “determine what constitutes an objective standard for reasonableness”? To be sure, the jury trial is not a perfect process and is often flawed. So let’s make it worse by racializing the jury pool. This is the left today.
She continues her rationalizations: “The legitimacy of the jury trial hinges on broad and inclusive lay participation. After all, only juries that reflect their diverse communities can instill a sense of confidence that justice has truly been served.” So it’s not about facts and reason but believability for the sake of the tribe, its disbelief in American justice manufactured by the ideology of antiracism. Of course, diversity does not get us to the truth. However, it may pacify the mob if outcomes are engineered in such a way that might satisfy them. Is justice a moral endeavor? Or is it theater?
No, Anna Offit, it seems obvious that you wanted blacks on the jury because you wanted an acquittal or a hung jury. You sympathize with Anthony because he is black, and for you, blacks are the terminal victims of white supremacy. You need this construction to present yourself as a white savior. You think that affinity and sympathy on those terms should determine the outcome of cases, not the force of argument or evidence.
This op-ed is forever.
Offit speaks for the left. When justice is reduced to race, then facts don’t matter. Even stabbing a teenager in the heart doesn’t matter. A black man is presumed not guilty because he is black. He is not responsible for what he did. Whether the victim is black or white, the real perpetrator is always white supremacy. It is hoped, at least, that his conviction will prove useful to the furtherance of the myth that American justice is racist. In this way, if identity is allowed to affect the process, justice is transformed into injustice and propaganda. It already often is.
The same is true for gender. We hear this in the “believe all women” rhetoric. The casualties of #MeToo were too many. A modern-day witch hunt, that was. No real proof is required for a witch to be guilty of whatever makes the village anxious. All that is required is for the villagers to believe that witches are present. Those who dismiss the claim for lack of evidence are immediately accused of defending witchcraft. Maybe they dabble in it themselves. And so the town’s more rational keep their skepticism to themselves. This is how bad things happen.
Progressives are on social media constantly calling Trump a “rapist.” Yet he has never even been criminally charged with rape, let alone convicted of the crime in a criminal trial. That fact doesn’t matter to them. What matters is that women have claimed he raped them. “Why would women say he raped them if it were not true?” Maybe because he has deep pockets? (What was that E. Jean Carroll all about?) But that’s not really a question I have to concern myself with. I am concerned with evidence. We hear this, too, in the charge that Trump is a pedophile. Any evidence of this? “The Epstein files!” What about them? Did I miss something?
My default position is to not believe anyone when they make a claim that requires evidence. “You stole my stereo speakers!” Prove it. “I know you did.” Not good enough. “I was abducted by aliens!” I don’t believe you. “But it happened!” Prove it. At least show me some evidence. “I am really a woman.” Well, Bob, I don’t believe you. “But it’s true!” Big or little gametes, Bob? A Y chromosome in there? “I don’t have to provide any evidence for that!” Then go peddle your claim to the gullible and indoctrinated. And this: “Are you calling me a liar?” You may be a liar. What I am saying is that I require evidence to believe that what you have claimed is true. Don’t turn this back on me. You made the claim.
Rape does occur. There are around 40–45 rapes per 100,000 population according to FBI statistics (keep in mind that 85–90 percent of rape victims are female). The NCVS (National Crime Victimization Survey) finds the rate of rape/sexual assault victimization to be about 1-2 per 1,000 persons. If we change the population unit for comparative purposes, then the FBI numbers are 0.40 to 0.45 rapes per 1,000 population. The NCVS figure is likely more accurate. However, the adjudication of such claims is properly handled in a court of law. The point is that, however we confront the problem that such statistics indicate, determination from identity in the administration of individual justice is always an irrational standard. This is why the CDC statistics don’t carry any sway if the law is the standard. Is it a rigid standard? For sure. And it should be.
“If it were your wife who said she was raped, what then?” I trust my wife. I would believe her. But there would still need to be probable cause to arrest and evidence to convict the alleged attacker. There are other women I trust enough to believe them, too. And if they are lying, then I won’t trust them anymore. But all women? No. I don’t believe all women.
I am sure Anthony’s parents trust their son. The father insisted that his son is a “good kid” who was provoked to violence. “Everyone has already made their assumptions about my son, but he’s not what they’re making him out to be.” The jury thought otherwise. Should I have believed Anthony when he said he acted in self-defense? Not based on what I knew about the case. The moment his attorneys mounted such a defense, they shifted the burden of proof. And they could not meet that burden.
Remember the Duke Lacrosse case from 2006? The local district attorney, Mike Nifong, aggressively pursued the case and made numerous public statements suggesting the players were guilty. In 2024, the “victim” Crystal Mangum publicly admitted that she had fabricated the rape allegation. “I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t.” I am leaving out the names of the real victims in this case. The young men did not deserve what happened to them. The perpetrator’s name and the district attorney who believed her—their names shall live in infamy.
Two of those young men were suspended from the university after their indictments (the other had already graduated). An indictment is not a conviction. The men were presumed innocent. The university did not extend that presumption to them. Instead, they canceled the Duke men’s lacrosse season and fired the coach. All this over an accusation. Attorney General Roy Cooper stated that there was “no credible evidence” that the alleged attack had occurred. He called the three men “innocent,” not simply that the evidence was insufficient to obtain a conviction.
Due process protections exist for a reason, especially when accusations carry life-altering consequences. These three men were arrested, publicly accused, two of them suspended from school, and endured intense national scrutiny. They were later fully exonerated but had to rebuild their lives. The experience had major personal and reputational consequences that followed them long after the charges were dismissed. There is no office where a man can go and get back his reputation.
Anthony enjoyed due process. Had he been acquitted, however, it is unlikely that he would have suffered any reputational harm from being accused of a killing that scores of people witnessed (and will never forget). Such are the presumptions of identitarianism. Before his conviction, he was permitted to finish high school. He spent a brief initial period in custody before posting his bond, initially set at one million dollars but reduced to 250,000 dollars, allowing him to stay at home in his gated community pending the trial.
One of the injustices about the Duke lacrosse case is that Crystal Mangum was never criminally charged with filing a false police report, perjury, or obstruction of justice. After the North Carolina Attorney General dismissed the case and declared the players innocent in 2007, prosecutors chose not to pursue charges against her arising from the false allegations. Mangum confessed to these crimes. She should be in prison.
As for Trump being a “convicted rapist,” a belief I considered might be troubling some readers, given what I earlier wrote, he was found liable—not guilty—in a civil court for sexual abuse—not assault or rape—and defamation (for denying the validity of Carroll’s accusation). The case is bizarre, as I said on numerous occasions. But the more important point is that a civil court is not a criminal court. The standard in civil trials is not “beyond a reasonable doubt,” but “more likely than not,” or “preponderance of the evidence.” This is not an appropriate venue for adjudicating criminal matters.
(As an aside, the actions of the university in the Duke lacrosse case illustrate why I have always maintained that accusations of sexual assault should never be handled by a company or a school. Those accused of a crime should be presumed innocent, and nothing should happen to them unless and until they have been convicted of the charges in a court of law. Accusations of criminal activity are properly handled by the criminal justice system.)
What especially drives me up the wall about identity is that whether an accuser is believed depends on whether he or she is a member of the tribe. Remember when Christopher Hitchens insisted that Bill Clinton had committed rape in the case of Juanita Broaddrick? Despite a strong case (he does make a compelling argument in a dedicated chapter in the paperback edition of his 2000 book, No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton, titled “Is There a Rapist in the Oval Office?”), those on the political left who admired Clinton flatly rejected the allegation.
Even progressives don’t really “believe all women.” It depends on whether the woman’s accusation advances the agenda—and that in turn depends on her politics. Hence, Trump is a rapist and a pedophile with no evidence to back up these accusations because he is on the wrong side. The same is true with black people. “Black Lives Matter!” Except if you’re an “Uncle Tom.” Then you betrayed the tribe. As the wiseman Joe Biden told Charlemane tha God, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
freedom and reason 