Trey Gowdy: Reflecting on institutions worthy of your respect
Trey Gowdy reflects on the recent jury trials in the Ahmaud Arbery and Kyle Rittenhouse cases and why the court system still works.
I hope that you have time to reflect on something that I have been reflecting on in the last seven days or so, and that's the institutions we have in our culture that are worthy of your respect and which ones are not.
The eyes of our nation were on two recent jury trials -- one was in Wisconsin and one was in Georgia. And most careful observers believe the jury got it right in both cases.
Juries usually do get it right. We're in a world where we've lost confidence in most other institutions, but the system that puts the decision in our hands, the hands of average everyday Americans, usually gets it right.
So what's different about the system we trust versus those we don't? And if we're looking for more institutions we can rely on, why not export the qualities of the trustworthy onto those entities for which we have lost regard? You know, juries take an oath to be fair. There's no friend to reward, no foe to punish. Juries are told to forget what they think or feel or really even believe before trial and focus exclusively on what is actually proven in trial. Juries do not substitute opinion for fact.
I mean think how often you run into that in our culture -- people confusing their opinion with what a fact is. Think about how much opinion are we subjected to. I mean, this very podcast is opinion. Warning someone that something is opinion is helpful. But there's nothing more helpful than facts, which is why I usually try to tell people, "Go make sure I'm right." I mean, I think I'm right. But me thinking I'm right and being right are two different things.
In court, there are rules. There's a referee -- that referee may be imperfect. By referee, I mean a judge. There's a judge in court. Judges are not perfect, but an imperfect referee or judge is better than no referee or judge.
So who's the referee in politics? Who's the referee in the media? Who's the judge? In court, The jury gets to see and hear the evidence for themselves. There's no commentator, no reporter, no politician selectively editing what happened and then reporting it to you. You know, in court, we had this thing called the rule of completeness, and it makes perfect sense. If you're going to play part of a recording, you've got to play at all. If you're going to introduce part of a statement, you got to introduce it all so we can make sure the context is appropriate. It's called the rule of completeness because in court you have to be complete, fair, factual and complete.
How different that is from the modern media and our modern political environment. Courts use cross-examination. There are no anonymous sources, no high-ranking official speaking on background. There's examination and cross-examination. You see and hear for yourself what's being said and by whom and whether you find it credible. The real reason we respect our justice system, I suspect, more than politics or the media is the destination being salt.
Juries want facts. They use those facts if they're proven beyond a reasonable doubt so they can arrive at something called the truth. That's what verdict means. Speak the truth. Juries are not obsessed with being first like the media is. Juries don't sell advertisement or worry about offending the reader or the viewer or the listener. Juries are not obsessed with winning at all costs, like politics is. Juries are, in essence, the smallest form of government -- 12 Americans coming together on matters as important as life and death and unanimously proclaiming the truth based on fact and fairness.
So I am not saying juries are perfect. No institution on Earth is, but at least juries acknowledge there is a truth. At least they strive for the perfect. At least they vigorously pursue it. And that's more than I can say for almost all the other institutions.
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Just because something's good doesn't mean it cannot be better. And I have to chuckle when I hear people in the world's least respected line of work, which is politics, telling people in the court system how to do their jobs better. Because it’s the court system that may be what's holding us together now, because it's us making decisions about us, following the rules with a common goal of finding the truth and taking an oath to block everything else out.
How good would the other institutions be if they tried that?
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