I don't think that Smollett being found guilty should give any profound insight about a broad political picture.

To be clear, no, a jury verdict isn't always perfect. A judge's decision isn't always perfect. I'm the last person who would claim that they are.

That said, there is such a thing as having two functioning eyes and a brain.

Stop comparing the Rittenhouse verdict to the OJ Simpson verdict as some way to justify you continuing to slander an innocent person. There was actually a legitimate case against OJ and a slew of prosecutorial errors. There was also a subsequent civil trial which did find him responsible within the less strict parameters of "more likely than not."

It's not like the Rittenhouse verdict dropped and I suddenly said, "Oh, you see? He's innocent!" I knew that he was innocent for more than a year because I bothered to look at the mother fucking evidence and lifted a finger to look up Wisconsin law in regard to self-defense. The jury verdict just means that an innocent person isn't going to die in prison and we should be celebrating that. The jury verdict didn't make him innocent. The fact that he was always innocent of the charges made him innocent.

Jussie Smollett didn't become guilty with his jury verdict. He was always guilty and a lot of us saw that he was guilty nearly two years ago. The verdict just means that a guilty person will be punished for something that he did. A not guilty verdict would just mean that a guilty person got away with a crime.

It's great to look at the facts of a case and question the verdicts - especially when people are found guilty. Lives have been saved by people looking at evidence for years after convictions and finding that mistakes were made.

Still, you actually have to bother to look at the damn evidence at some point. You don't just get to say that sometimes guilty people get off therefore you don't have to accept a not guilty verdict bestowed upon somebody who you don't like without doing your fucking research.