The scene in a Utah courtroom on Wednesday was, by any standard, jaw-dropping. Tyler Robinson’s defense attorney, Richard Novak, stood before Judge Tony F. Graf and openly suggested that conservative activist Charlie Kirk deserved to be killed. That is not hyperbole. Novak’s argument — that Robinson had good reason to assassinate Kirk — was allowed to continue, according to columnist Patricia McCarthy writing for American Thinker.
For those watching, it was another sign that the American justice system has become less about law and more about ideology, McCarthy argues. In her piece, she writes that the system is now a tool for preserving leftist power, not for delivering justice.
Judge Graf, who McCarthy says had ‘bent over backwards to be fair,’ let Novak’s diatribe run — a diatribe she describes as ‘outrageous and totally false.’ She notes that even in fictional legal thrillers, such a tactic would likely be cut. But in a real courtroom, the judge allowed it to unfold.
What made it worse, McCarthy writes, is that Charlie Kirk never spoke hatefully about anyone. He offered conversation, was not rude or condescending, and simply promoted traditional values and shared his faith. To suggest he deserved to die is, in her view, a lie meant to excuse a cold-blooded murder.
Robinson, McCarthy reminds readers, killed a man, risked harming countless others, and bragged about it. The evidence against him, she says, is overwhelming. Novak’s closing argument, she writes, leapt into the gutter — and Judge Graf let him stay there.
The contrast with the Lindsay Clancy trial
McCarthy draws a sharp contrast with another high-profile case: the trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts woman accused of murdering her three young children by strangling them with exercise bands. In that case, the judge disallowed any reference to Clancy’s religion and chastised the prosecutor for suggesting it was relevant. Yet in the Utah hearing, the judge permitted a defense attorney to malign Kirk for what McCarthy calls ‘an eternity of lies.’
The Clancy trial, she notes, has also exposed moral rot. A group of supporters — some in pink shirts — have rallied around Clancy, never mentioning the children she is accused of killing. The jury has told the judge three times that they are deadlocked, which McCarthy interprets as a sign that at least one juror does not hold her responsible for the murders.
How did we get here? McCarthy points to fifty years of Marxist indoctrination in universities — and now in kindergartens. She cites figures like George Soros and Neville Roy Singham as funders of protests, corrupt district attorneys, and radical judges. She even suggests they had a hand in the Russia hoax and other lawfare against the Trump family. The left, in her view, has destroyed what was once a proud legal system.
She also criticizes the American Bar Association and warns that the left now wants to pack the Supreme Court with at least four more justices so that no conservative’s vote will ever matter again.
A broader indictment of American institutions
McCarthy’s critique extends beyond the courts. She sees the pandemic as a controlled experiment, DEI as a force that ended the SAT requirement and left college freshmen unable to do simple math, and transgender care as the mutilation of children. She even takes a swipe at a female Supreme Court justice for being unable to define what a woman is.
All of this, she writes, has ruined a once-revered system of justice. She quotes Antonin Scalia: ‘As long as judges tinker with the Constitution to do what the people want instead of what the document actually commands, politicians who pick and confirm federal judges will naturally want only those who agree with them politically.’
For McCarthy, the remedy is free speech — now more than ever. ‘If what you see on American Thinker resonates with you,’ she writes, urging readers to support the site.
But the essence of her argument is that what happened in Utah is not an isolated incident. It is a symptom of a system that has lost its moral compass — one where judges allow defense attorneys to justify assassination and where juries cannot agree that a mother who strangled her children is guilty. The question she poses is stark: What has become of our judiciary, of our entire system of justice?
Source: www.americanthinker.com — https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/09/what-has-become-of-our-judiciary-of-our-entire-system-of-justice/