Not Guilty

 

Guilty

Well I'm guilty, yeah I'm guilty,
I'll be guilty for the rest of my life
How come I never do,
What I'm supposed to do
How come nothing that I try to do ever turns out right

If you are found Not Guilty are you found Innocent?

I have charitably assumed that the far-right Trump-ers , as represented by Louie Gohmert, were two- dimensional thinkers living in a three dimensional ( or four-dimensional,  if you count time) world. It is worse than that. They are clearly one-dimensional thinkers.

Louie Gohmert gave this away when he stated. "If you're a Republican, you can't even lie to Congress or lie to an FBI agent or they're coming after you."  He made this statement in reaction to the Not Guilty finding for Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman of lying to the FBI, versus the indictment of Peter Navarro. Poor Louie. He assumes that a jury outcome is one dimensional, "Convicted" or "Getting Away With It". In fact, for thousands of years, it has been two-dimensional: Guilty or Innocent; and Provable or Not Provable. That is why the jury makes a finding of Not Guilty, they do NOT make a finding of Innocent ( or “Getting Away With It”).

The jury system is such that there are four possible outcomes:

1.     Guilty and Provable,

2.     Guilty and Not Provable,

3.     Innocent and Provable and

4.     Innocent and Not Provable.

The last three outcomes are collectively called NOT Guilty. . Yes, you may be getting away with it ( aka "Guilty and Not Provable") but the state is willing to accept this rather than accidentally finding you guilty when you are "Innocent and Not Provable". Not everyone is Guilty, despite Louie Gohmert's claim. Not everyone is a crook. It is just that there are smart crooks and dumb crooks, and dumb crooks leave lots of evidence behind.  I wonder which kind of crooks we are dealing with here.