In the age of cellphone cameras, police body cameras, overhead security cameras and viral videos, rushing to judgment is the norm. And in the case of Minneapolis, how could you not? Millions have seen the video, and I suspect the majority of reactions were immediate and something like mine: I shouted an expletive after seeing the image of a white police officer with his knee on a prone black man’s neck.

The officer, Derek Chauvin, did this for some eight minutes Monday as the handcuffed man on the ground, George Floyd, cried, “I can’t breath.”

And then George Floyd died.

“That cop needs to be charged with murder,” I said to no one there. No wonder the city erupted.

Three days later, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman declared he wouldn’t “rush to charge,” as was done in the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore. And then he appeared to do it anyway. On Friday, Chavin was taken into custody and charged with multiple counts, including murder.

When videos of such violence move quickly into social media, they go viral and strike visceral, and put pressure on prosecutors to act faster than they may want. Images of police brutality get instantly into the parts of the brain where shock and anger live. The video from Minneapolis might be the most outrageous of all we’ve seen.

Eight minutes? A cop with his knee on the back of a man’s neck for eight minutes? Other cops just standing there?

“This is the law in America,” declared Larry Gregory, who lives in West Baltimore and comments frequently about current events. “Cop just murders a man in front of a crowd as they asked him to stop. Black people are just targets ...”

Gregory, who is middle aged and has lived here his entire life, frequently talks about racism. Even as Baltimore experiences a long run of criminal violence while the police department remains understaffed, he worries about seeing more cops on the streets. It sounds crazy to hear that. But, in Gregory’s view, five years after the Freddie Gray case, more cops could mean more black men like him being harassed or brutalized. That’s just the sad reality.

Gregory still thinks Gray was murdered, though no one was ever convicted of that crime in connection with his death. And Gregory is not the only Baltimorean I have heard that from.

But, here’s the but: Even in the age of ubiquitous cameras, seeing what you think is murder and crying murder doesn’t get you a murder conviction.

In that sense, the Freddie Gray case provides a lesson, though not necessarily the one the prosecutor in Minneapolis had in mind when he said he would avoid a “rush” to judgment.

Marilyn Mosby, the Baltimore State’s Attorney who famously charged six officers in Gray’s death, was correct Thursday when she said, in responding to Freeman in Minneapolis, that, “I didn’t have video footage of a murder.” But she did have some video, from different angles, of aspects of Gray’s arrest in April 2015.

The first video I saw was taken by a bystander and aired on local television. It showed Gray being half-dragged by officers toward a police van.

I thought Gray’s leg appeared to be broken, or that his back had been injured in the arrest. Neither turned out to be the case.

What looked horrible on first viewing had little to do with what actually caused Gray’s death at the age of 25.

Gray’s wrists and ankles were shackled. He was placed in the van, but not restrained with a seat belt. The medical examiner concluded that Gray died from a single “high-energy injury” to his neck and spine that occurred while being transported in the van.

Almost all other suspicions about what Baltimore police officers did to Gray — and what Mosby charged them with 12 days after his death — turned out not to be supported by evidence.

One particularly provocative issue was the suspicion that a police officer had given Gray a “rough ride.” But when that accusation was considered in a courtroom, prosecutors could not prove it.

When Judge Barry Williams issued his opinions at the conclusion of the trial of the van driver, Officer Caesar Goodson, Williams said there was nothing there, and he said it in the strongest terms.

I was in the courtroom that day in June 2016. The judge concluded that Gray’s death, while tragic, had not been caused by criminal conduct. It was not murder. There was no evidence of a “rough ride,” Williams said. In fact, he called the use of that term “inflammatory.”

The judge further said there was no evidence that Goodson knew or should have known that Gray needed medical attention during the drive from his arrest in Sandtown-Winchester to the Western District police station.

Goodson’s acquittal represented the third failed case for Mosby’s office, and she soon dropped the remaining charges.

So was it a “rush to judgment,” a decision more political than legally sound, to quickly charge the Freddie Gray cops to keep the city from more of the unrest that had ripped through West Baltimore on the day of Gray’s funeral?

Or were the charges against the cops just too hard to prove?

In dismantling the prosecution’s case, the judge’s words at the end of the Goodson trial made clear that the state totally failed to meet the burden of proof.

And it’s clear by now that meeting that burden is much harder when the defendants are police officers tried for actions in the line of duty.

So, to actually get convictions, it follows that a prosecutor would not rush, but carefully assess all the evidence, even present it secretly to a grand jury, before announcing charges. That normally would take a lot of time.

But, like it or not, technology has brought us to a different place now: Cameras everywhere, viral videos, a public sickened by brutality and racism, and shouting for justice.