The Public’s indictment of Tony Stewart

May 9, 2014; Kansas City, KS, USA; NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver Tony Stewart during practice for the 5-Hour Energy 400 at Kansas Speedway. Mandatory Credit: Andrew Weber-USA TODAY Sports

So, it appears, at least for now, that NASCAR Sprint Cup Champion Tony Stewart will not be facing criminal charges for his role in an on-track accident that left 20-year-old Kevin Ward Jr. dead. That doesn’t seem to matter though to a whole lot of people though, who have already pronounced a verdict. Facts be damned, a number of people have already either convicted or acquitted Stewart, and want you to know about it.

Because there is video, I think, there was a tsunami of judgment on message boards and social media. Twitter is aflame with judgement really.  People looked at the media, made their own decisions and then posted it online. Never mind that the vast bulk of people have never raced a winged sprint car, they were suddenly experts after one grainy video on Youtube. Very few people let the fact that they have no law enforcement training or legal training stop them from pronouncing a sentence either.

Regardless of what happens legally, “Tony Stewart is murderer,” is something that’s going to stain his entire career with a segment of NASCAR fans and casual media watchers whose only experience with NASCAR is watching that clip. I’m pretty certain this is going to follow him the rest of his life. There are people who still remember Ricky Rudd as the driver who killed a member of Bill Elliot’s pit crew in Atlanta at 1990.

For me though, as a former cops and courts reporter, I can wait, trust the system. There is probably a wealth of evidence that investigators have, but that doesn’t matter to people who watched a video one time.

There’s maybe a racial component to this as well. I found probably a hundred tweets comparing Tony Stewart to Michael Vick and Mike Brown. Vick plead guilty to a single count of felony dog fighting and sentenced to three years, of which he served almost two years in prison. Mike Brown was an unarmed African American teenager shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri

The following is a sample of posting from Twitter: