“It should not take nine minutes of damning video to get some accountability. There’s a reason the Pledge of Allegiance doesn’t say, ‘With liberty and justice for all who are being filmed on an iPhone. Otherwise, sucks to be you!’” — Stephen Colbert

Come on, let’s face it — if this wasn’t involving a police officer, this would have been the easiest trial ever for the prosecution. Someone kneeled on someone’s neck until they died. Seriously, what’s your defense?

Now the thing to do is to imagine what the trial may have been like had there not been a video made. Do you think the cop would still be found guilty?

For that matter, would the prosecution even have brought the case in the first place?

Let’s review other similar cases.

Remember Eric Gardner, the guy who was selling cigarettes and was choked to death on camera? Charges weren’t even brought.

Michael Brown, shot by police in broad daylight in Ferguson? No charges.

Sandra Bland, who was arrested without cause (the cop admitted he lied about it) who was mysteriously found dead in her cell over a traffic ticket? No charges.

Breanna Taylor, shot in her bed by officers who broke into the wrong home? No charges.

And then I could name a bunch of cases where they actually went to trial but the results were hung juries or acquittals.

There are plenty of cases where it is clear the police abused their power and people died yet the worst consequence they may have faced was in losing their job.

This is the reason there is a Black Lives Matter movement. This is why it is needed.

So this verdict is not surprising in that it’s so blatantly obvious the murderer was guilty, but at the same time, surprising because a cop finally faced justice for killing someone.

If you’re pretending that this guy was actually not guilty, you’re either willfully ignoring facts or are just a racist who believes it’s perfectly fine for police to murder black people without cause.