Hopefully, we can all agree to deplore and condemn Darrell Brooks , the madman convicted for killing six people in Waukesha, Wisconsin, last year with his car, hitting a total of 68 people after he drove into a Christmas parade.
The vile act itself is one thing; the trial added insult to injury. That Brooks was allowed by the judge to conduct himself in such an outlandish and disrespectful manner has become the subject of heated debate: Some suggest that Judge Jennifer Dorow knew what she was doing and strategically allowed Brooks to do pretty much as he pleased in court. A smaller group of observers find that excuse to be unsatisfactory.
Judge Dorow: Subtle Genius or Squish?
That Brooks is both grotesque and infuriating is a given. But why was Brooks permitted to turn this trial into a circus? Unlike other courtroom dramas, watching the Brooks trial was not edifying, but rather mystifying.
Brooks repeatedly interrupted the courtroom’s proceedings, but Dorow reacted each time with a milquetoast warning. “That’s another interruption,” she said, marking it down in her notebook as though her notes would somehow be of consequence. A veritably endless argument over whether Brooks could use the term “jury nullification” is an example of this farce. Brooks proceeded to quibble with the application of case law history with the judge, though it is dubious that he was in command of the facts.
…one must question the notion that Judge Dorow was somehow outsmarting everyone by letting Brooks walk all over her. It’s too clever by half.
According to Judge Dorow, experts found that Brooks was intelligent and articulate enough to represent himself, despite his diagnosed personality disorder. Yet his conduct was frightening. Judge Dorow admitted of his intense stare-down: “Frankly, it makes me scared.”:
“I know you used to be a legislator, but you cannot make law from the bench,” Brooks chided the judge from behind his surgical mask. “Alright Mr. Brooks, you’re starting to cross the line,” she responded. “You’ve already crossed it but I want to keep going…I’m putting you on notice.” Judge Dorow made a classic mistake also made by teachers: Endless threats, yet no follow through and no consequence. The wayward student, in this case Darrell Brooks, sensed the threats had no teeth, was emboldened, and not only continued but doubled down.
Brooks addressed Judge Dorow as though she were an idiot and he was patiently trying to explain something to her. Brooks’ insolence extended to his body language: He shook his head and rolled his eyes.
Though he had no right to such a posture, Brooks regarded the judge with thinly veiled contempt. At any rate, the bickering between the two tended to degrade the judge, dragging her down to Brooks’s sordid level and degrading the court in the process.
On every Youtube video and social media post of this case are a legion of commenters, saying something along the lines of, “She knows exactly what she’s doing”, “She’s a boss,” “a superstar.” The divide in opinion tends to fall along gender lines, with women particularly anxious that a female authority figure is not perceived as weak (many men, though, shared that view too).
The trial, I’m afraid, is all part of the decline of Western Civilization. This fiasco of this trial is symptomatic of a culture which indulges those who will recognize no authority.
Read more at The Washington Examiner’s Restoring America