Yesterday's court proceedings of "Pastor" Terry Jones of Florida who came to Michigan to protest what he averred as Sharia Law overtaking communities like Muslim rich Dearborn Michigan could have been a show of American solidarity around the United States Constitution, and toward each other as free and protected individuals. Instead, County Prosecutor Kim Worthy and a jury of angry mobsters played right into his hands by answering his charge like enraged religious zealots, brains addled of logic and civility by their own dogmas. And it has become an embarrassment for which no one but a few seem to be showing their shame.
After an exhaustive, day long hearing to determine whether Jones and those accompanying him should pay a $45,000 "peace bond" in order to to go through with his planned demonstration in Dearborn, the verdict came back hours after his scheduled 5:00 demonstration start time. Somehow the bond went from thousands to $1 for each person in the group. My guess is that officials began to realize that Jones could be manipulated more by his sense of principle than a large dollar amount. It was a bluff, and a gamble that paid off.
"Are you prepared to post the $1 bond?" (Dearborn District Judge Mark) Somers asked Jones.
"Uh," Jones said, pausing for a brief moment, before declaring: "No."
Bear in mind that the trial ... yes, it was a trial ... the verdict ... and the resulting monetary demands by the court ... all came before Terry Jones had even done so much as walk into a Dearborn, Michigan grocery store. In less than 24 hours! He literally went from the airport to the court house.
And now, after refusing to pay the one dollar bond ... went directly to jail.
A hearing, a verdict, a sentence, and a jail term, however symbolically brief ... all before a crime had even been committed. If that doesn't have miscarriage of justice written all over it, then we have all completely lost our fucking minds.
"We thought it was important because of public safety," (Prosecutor Kim Worthy Spokesperson Maria) Miller said. Wayne State University professor Robert Sedler, an expert in constitutional law, said the trial was "bizarre" and that Worthy "should have known better." "The judge should have thrown out the case," Sedler said.
(...)
"This is a complete abuse of the court process, and all those involved should be ashamed," said Rana Elmir of the ACLU Michigan office. "The prosecutor's office and the Dearborn court turned the First Amendment on its head. What happened today should never have happened."
Let me just say, I think Terry Jones is a religious nutcase. I wish for things to prevent him from spreading his ignorance, bigotry and hatred ... natural things that just happen to stop him from going through with his cult-like mission to demonstrate himself as some kind of prophet. He's a common cult leader. I have a history with someone like that and I know its face and its intent. But short of that superstition of mine, a desire to see him somehow stopped from spreading more hate than he already has, I thought I could always trust the American legal system from ever letting anything get so far as to run rampant beyond the perimeters of justifiable outrage and the laws that enforce it's boundaries. In this case, the entire system has failed.
Yes, Jones is a taunting menace. But like it or not, he had a right to demonstrate. Dearborn, a community I embrace as a part of my Detroit could have made this a moment of pride, of an understanding of the US Constitution; to prove that the laws we have are as brilliant and vastly superior to chaos and vigilantism as we have come to believe them to be. Local religious leaders announced their intentions to link hands and encircle the Mosque and prove to the country that there is consensus in Dearborn that nothing, not even religious insanity can budge the community off of its beam. Instead they went with rakes and torches and ended up looking like a Salem Witchcraft mob.
If Dearborn was that concerned that its city was going to react in violence to Jones' words, or even the burning of a book then the problem wasn't Jones. It would have been their own religious zealotry.
So now what we have are two entities of zealotry crashing head on in the middle of an American courtroom, casting aside all traces of fairness and justice. And even though part of Jones' sentence was to be banned from coming back to anywhere within adjacent property to the Mosque near which he intended to demonstrate for at least three years, they have given him full reign to make this an issue all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary until he will finally end up getting everything he wanted. Except by then passions and emotions will be more heightened than we can even imagine, and the dangers will be ten fold.
Jones associate Wayne Sapp said, following the verdict of this joke of a trial referring to the First Amendment of the US Constitution, "That's what made America great. We're entitled to our opinion."
These brainless zealots in Dearborn have actually gone and made a religious zealot in a room filled with mad religious nutcases of all stripes seemingly one of the only correct persons in the room, and perhaps for miles.
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