Americans like to sneer at Brits, ‘you gave up your guns and now you get arrested for Facebook posts’. Well, Americans may have their guns, but they can still find themselves arrested and convicted for mean words.
And if Yanks want to sneer at the Brits for two-tier policing, then they might want to do something about the two-tier beam in their own eyes. Just like in Britain, Americans now live under a legal system where child rapists get off scot-free, but saying the wrong word to that child-rapist while he’s loitering around playgrounds will cost you plenty. First Amendment, be damned.
A jury has reached a verdict in the trial of a Minnesota woman who allegedly directed racial slurs at an 8-year-old girl with autism while at a Rochester playground.
Shiloh Hendrix was found not guilty on the first count of misdemeanor disorderly conduct.
Hendrix was found guilty on the second count for the interaction with the videographer. Her attorney said he will appeal that.
“We will appeal it. We have so many appellate issues, I don’t even know where to begin,” Brian Karalus said.
He’s not wrong.
As Karalus pointed out, outside the court, “I've never had a trial that keeps people until 10.30 at night.” Normally, he said, courts adjourn about four or five o’clock to allow jurors, who usually have families, to go home for the night. The late-night sitting seemed calculated to pressure the jury.
Other odd facts about the trial constitute a smorgasbord of appellate issues for Hendrix to appeal on. For starters, reading a five-minute victim impact statement from the child, even though Hendrix had been acquitted of any offence in relation to the child.
The judge also prohibited the defence from pointing out that the adult witness was perjuring himself “over and over and over again”. This relates to Sharmake Omar’s denial of having an active GoFundMe account allowing him to profit from the instance. In fact, as the defence’s investigators proved, the GoFundMe was still at the time active and taking donations. But, “the judge would not let me show it to the jury”.
“I was fighting the prosecutor and the judge,” Karalus said. “I’m taking on two parties at the same time... it was very bizarre.”
Or, perhaps not. As some observers have noted:
He raises many concerning issues, but what stands out to me most is that the judge repeatedly left the bench, interrupted him, or talked over him every time he tried to make a record.
The fact that it happened over and over suggests that she understood he was trying to preserve an appellate issue and she didn’t want him to create a detailed record about what evidence she had excluded and why the defence believed those rulings were wrong. Once or twice would be one thing, but when it happened every time, it comes across like she was trying to systematically prevent the defence from creating the paper trail that would be needed to challenge those rulings on appeal.
As for Sharmake Omar, the Somali immigrant who filmed himself aggressively provoking Hendrix into saying ‘nigger’, well – he’s quite the piece of work.
In April 2020 Omar, along with another Somali, committed a violent assault in the street. Omar threw a rock at a car, then attacked and beat the 16-year-old driver. A bystander tried to intervene, but Omar’s accomplice threatened him with a knife.
Faruq Ali Omar (28) of Rochester, and Sharmake Beyle Omar (29) of Rochester, were accused of assaulting three men on April 24, 2020, in the 2900 block of Charles Court Northwest. Court documents state Sharmake Omar threw a rock at a car and then attacked the 16-year-old driver. Court documents state the 19-year-old brother of the 16-year-old driver was also assaulted. Sharmake Omar pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and was fined $200. The assault, threats of violence and riot charges against Faruq Omar were dropped “in the interest of justice”.
In 2022, Omar and another Somali, Mohamed Hussein Omer, abducted a 16-year-old girl from a gas station and raped her for two days. She was found “sleep-deprived, dehydrated and had not eaten recently” according to the nurse that examined her.
All charges were dropped, again, “in the interest of justice”.
If it had been up to the judge who threw the book at Shiloh Hendrix, Omar would not only have had the charges dropped, but been compensated for his trouble.
Judge Christa Daily in 2024 heard the case of Trashun Lacameron Haywood, who stabbed a man multiple times on Christmas Eve 2021, nearly killing him. Haywood later skipped bail. Daily’s sentence meant he served just six months in jail.
In 2020, Daily presided on the case of Thomas Lee Mayer, who was found in possession of thousands of child pornography images, including explicit images of children as young as six. Daily’s wrist-slap meant Mayer spent no time at all in jail: the onerous total of two days’ jail she imposed were wiped out by the two days he’d spent in police custody after being arrested. Meyer was ordered to serve just 100 days of community service.
Meanwhile, Daily sentenced Shiloh Hendrix to 200 days community service and a $1,000 fine. All for using a meany word at a juvenile thief and an adult child rapist.
