Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdict was founded on lies and political expediency, and this book explains exactly how it all went down.  Former Federal Prosecutor T.J. Harker offers a meticulous demonstration of why Derek Chauvin is innocent of his murder charges and how prosecutors and judges bent the rules and perverted the legal system to coerce a guilty verdict anyway. The trial was compromised from the very start, and transformed into a ritual of collective guilt that could only end in one way. This book is a damning and sweeping account of the prosecution that turned a commonplace incident into a politicized farce. Questions of causation, responsibility, due process and the proper role of the police and justice system were all set aside for the greater cause of making Chauvin into the scapegoat the mob demanded. A morally charged story of wanton racial villainy came to dominate American national consciousness rather than the mundane, if tragic, event that it really was.  The American people needed Derek Chauvin to be guilty. But he wasn’t. And now the American people need to understand why.