For many years, my family lived in a house built in 1874 by the first mayor of Indianola, Lewis Todhunter, and his wife Elizabeth. Todhunter — who helped found the Republican Party in Iowa — served in the Civil War, represented Warren County at Iowa’s 1857 constitutional convention, and was elected county prosecutor.

In 1877, Todhunter became involved in the case of Reuben Proctor. Proctor was accused of the attempted murder of a young woman, shot while resisting the robbery of her home. The case naturally produced a great deal of community outrage.

While Proctor was being held in the Indianola jail, a mob gathered outside and attempted to break down the door, so they could mete out their own brand of justice.

Todhunter, alerted to the situation, jumped on his horse and rode down to the jail, where he was able to help persuade the lynch mob to disband. The brave gesture succeeded only temporarily, however; several days later, as Proctor was being tried in a nearby town, a large group of vigilantes nabbed him and hanged him from a weighing scale crosstree.

Although we typically associate lynching with racial motivations, in this case the occurrence stemmed from a lack of faith in, or impatience with, our system of justice. Between 1890 and 1918, there were 3,224 lynchings in the U.S. While the vast majority of those lynched in the U.S. were Black, especially in the South, in the upper Midwest the majority (80 out of 147) of lynchings during this period were of white victims. In the West, 92% of the 156 lynchings were of white people.

According to professor James Chadbourn’s 1933 investigation, these non-racial cases were primarily motivated by dissatisfaction with “the administration of criminal justice.” Those in the lynch mob doubted that the judicial system would deliver “sure and swift punishment of crimes.”

The last lynching in Iowa occurred in 1907, in Charles City. A mob of several hundred stormed the Floyd County jail and seized James Cullen, a wealthy, white contractor who had confessed to murdering his wife and stepson the previous day. A crowd of 500 citizens witnessed the hanging of Cullen from the Main Street bridge.

As described by historian Michael James Pfeifer, the citizens of Charles City felt justified in taking this violent action: “Expressing deep frustration with what they perceived as the failure of the existing legal system to enforce justice effectively, they posited the right of citizens who made the laws to enforce them if legal institutions failed to do so.”

We have come a long way since 1907. Citizens’ belief in the rule of law and the basic integrity and fairness of our criminal justice processes has effectively suppressed the perceived need for vigilante action.

But we should remember that this hard-won faith in our judicial system and the rule of law is fragile. The recent chorus of criticism of judges and juries as being politically motivated and engaged in “sham” prosecutions threatens to undermine public acceptance of one of democracy’s foundations.

Those of us involved in the justice system know that the overwhelming majority of prosecutors and judges have only one motivation: to enforce the law fairly. Numerous safeguards to ensure this are in place.

For example, prosecutors are bound by ethical rules “to refrain from prosecuting a charge that the prosecutor knows or reasonably should know is not supported by probable cause.” In many states, the prosecutor must convince a grand jury of citizens that there is sufficient evidence to indict before charges can be brought. At trial, the judge will dismiss the case if there is insufficient evidence to convict. Even if the judge allows the case to go forward, the jury has to agree that evidence of guilt has been presented “beyond a reasonable doubt.” If a jury convicts on insufficient evidence, an appellate court will undoubtedly reverse the conviction.

To call a case a “sham” requires one to believe that an entire team of prosecutors decided to risk their careers by neglecting their ethical duty, that the grand jury decided to indict despite the lack of evidence, that the judge failed to dismiss the insufficient case, and that the trial jury — selected by both sides, with rules to eliminate biased members — unanimously agreed to convict without a sufficient basis in law or fact.

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While the jury system is far from perfect, the fact that our Constitution requires a group of ordinary citizens to find a person guilty represents an important protection of our liberties that should be celebrated rather than denigrated.

Politicians who actively undermine the public’s faith in our judicial system and the rule of law are playing a very dangerous game. As the early history of lynching in our country demonstrates, public acceptance of this system is not a given. On Jan. 6, 2021, we saw how the erosion of confidence in our elections — another bedrock of democracy –– had disastrous consequences.

Lewis Todhunter, who risked his life to defend the rule of law in Iowa, would be appalled.

Jerry Anderson is dean and Calkins Distinguished Professor of Law at Drake University Law School. The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Drake University. Contact: jerry.anderson@drake.edu.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: ‘Sham’ trial remarks dangerously erode confidence in judicial system