Justice is a convenient word for people who like neat endings. The recent conviction of four men in a Miami federal court for their roles in the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse is being hailed as a triumph of the American legal system. The narrative is simple: the bad actors were caught, the conspiracy was unraveled, and the rule of law prevailed.
That narrative is a lie.
What we witnessed in that courtroom wasn't the resolution of a tragedy. It was a forensic autopsy of a symptom, while the underlying disease continues to liquefy the patient. By focusing on the mechanics of the hit—the logistics, the Florida-based security firms, and the money trail—the international community is ignoring the terrifying reality that these convictions change absolutely nothing for the ten million people living in a failed state.
The Illusion of Closure
The Miami Herald and other legacy outlets lean heavily on the "success" of the U.S. Department of Justice. They track the life sentences of Germán Rivera and Rodolphe Jaar as if they are milestones on a road to recovery. They aren't.
In the world of geopolitics, these men are disposable assets. They are the "middle management" of mayhem. Locking them up in a Florida penitentiary provides a sense of moral superiority for the West, but it fails to answer the only question that matters: Who actually gains from a decapitated Haiti?
The trial focused on the how. We know about the conspirators meeting in South Florida. We know about the former Colombian soldiers. We know about the botched plan to arrest Moïse before it turned into an execution. But the why remains a murky soup of elite interests and gang-controlled territories that the Miami court has no jurisdiction over and seemingly no interest in poking.
The Export of Justice as a Subterfuge
Why is the trial happening in Miami? Because the Haitian judicial system is a ghost. When a country cannot protect its own judges or secure its own prisons, it cedes its sovereignty. The U.S. taking over the prosecution is an admission of total failure, not a partnership.
I’ve spent years watching how international interventions play out in the Caribbean. Every time a "high-profile" conviction happens in a foreign court, the local pressure for systemic reform evaporates. The headlines give the impression that the "problem" is being handled by the adults in the room. Meanwhile, in Port-au-Prince, the gangs have more fire-power than the police, and the vacuum left by Moïse hasn't been filled by democracy—it has been filled by warlords like Jimmy "Barbecue" Chérizier.
If you think a life sentence for a Colombian mercenary in Miami makes a gang leader in Cité Soleil tremble, you are delusional. It emboldens them. It proves that the state is so weak it has to outsource its revenge to a superpower.
The Mercenary Myth and the Reality of Private Security
One of the biggest misconceptions dismantled during these proceedings—if you were actually paying attention—is the idea of the "elite mercenary." The men convicted were a ragtag group of contractors who couldn't even organize a proper getaway.
The competitor articles paint them as high-level conspirators. In reality, they were pawns in a messy, low-budget coup attempt funded by people with more ambition than sense. The real danger isn't the "four men convicted." The danger is the global deregulation of violence.
We are seeing a trend where private security firms (like the ones involved in this plot, CTU Security) operate in a legal gray zone. They offer "protection" and "regime change" as a service. The Miami convictions touch the surface of this industry but fail to address the systemic lack of oversight that allows a Florida-registered business to plan the murder of a head of state.
Why the "Success" of This Trial is a Failure for Haiti
The U.S. court system is designed to find individual guilt. It is not designed to fix broken nations.
- Information Siloing: The plea deals signed by these defendants often involve keeping the most sensitive political information off the public record to protect "national security" or ongoing investigations. We get the conviction, but we lose the truth.
- The "Lone Wolf" Fallacy: By framing this as a conspiracy of eleven individuals (the total charged in the U.S.), the court suggests that if you remove these specific people, the threat is gone. This is mathematically impossible. The conditions that allowed this assassination—corruption, extreme poverty, and the disintegration of the police—are worse now than they were in 2021.
- The Distraction Factor: Every day the media spends dissecting the testimony of a Colombian soldier is a day they aren't talking about the fact that Haiti hasn't held an election in years.
Dismantling the "People Also Ask" Logic
People often ask: "Will these convictions stabilize Haiti?"
The answer is a flat, resounding no. Stability isn't built on the back of a trial 700 miles away. Stability is built on domestic legitimacy. Moïse, for all his faults, was the last vestige of a constitutional order. His death didn't just kill a man; it killed the office.
Another common query: "Who really killed the President?"
The Miami court says it was these men. But that's a narrow, legalistic answer. In a broader sense, Moïse was killed by a decade of international indifference and a local elite that prefers chaos to a functioning tax system. The trigger-pullers are in jail. The architects of the environment that made the trigger-pulling inevitable are likely sitting in air-conditioned villas, watching the trial on cable news.
The Brutal Truth of Geopolitical Optics
The U.S. needs these convictions to look like a win because it masks the failure of its Haiti policy. For decades, the strategy has been "containment." Keep the refugees from reaching Florida shores and keep the violence localized.
The trial is a PR exercise in containment. It tells the American public: "See? We caught the guys who caused the mess." It’s a way to close the book on a chapter that the State Department wants to forget.
But for those on the ground, the book is wide open, and the pages are being burned. The conviction of Germán Rivera doesn't put food in the markets. It doesn't stop the kidnappings. It doesn't reopen the hospitals.
Stop Clapping for the Bare Minimum
We have been conditioned to celebrate the low bar of "someone went to jail."
When you read that four men were convicted, don't feel a sense of relief. Feel a sense of dread. These men are the residue of a botched operation. The fact that they were caught so easily—and prosecuted so publicly—suggests they were never the real power players.
The real power players don't end up in Miami federal court. They end up in charge.
If we continue to treat these trials as "justice," we are complicit in the charade. We are accepting a world where the assassination of a president is treated like a mid-level narcotics case. We are choosing the comfort of a verdict over the hard work of addressing a collapsed civilization.
The Miami convictions aren't a victory for the rule of law. They are a funeral for Haitian sovereignty, presided over by a foreign court, while the world watches the wrong suspects.
Quit looking at the guys in orange jumpsuits. Start looking at the empty chair in the National Palace.
That emptiness is the real crime, and no one is being convicted for it.
