I don’t have answers. I have questions. A lot of questions. And observations. And opinions, many of which are strongly held. But no answers. We have to figure out each one and together what justice is worth to us individually and as a nation.
Justice is a noble concept. Righting wrongs and all. And an ancient concept. Justice has been with us as a species from our earliest records of civilization, (The Code of Hammurabi) and can be inferred from actions by descendants of the earliest cultures. No culture we know of doesn’t have some mechanism for addressing wrongs done by one member to another. But where the rubber meets the road, what are we willing to pay, financially, morally and ethically to support justice?
Note: It occurred to me rather late in this that it might end up being too intense for first thing in the morning. If so, I apologise and feel free to skip out the back of the class. ::Huuugggsss!::
We collectively support people who make laws and those who enforce them. We contribute and allocate significant resources to protecting those who have been wronged, to finding and punishing those who perpetrated the wrong, and preventing further wrongs from being committed.
What about when we get it wrong? The Innocence Project has exonerated 235 people who were wrongfully imprisoned for various reasons, through various means. So far. And the Innocence Project only deals with cases whose outcomes can be definitively determined by DNA evidence, a small percentage.
There can be strong biases against redressing mistakes made in or by the justice system. How many innocents are held hostage because the cost of admitting error is considered higher than the moral cost of keeping an innocent person in jail? Founding Father Benjamin Franklin opined that it was better to let 100 guilty go free than one innocent should suffer, echoing philosophical views held through the ages from at least biblical times. Yet we have demonstrably allowed not only imprisonment and lives or reputations to be ruined, but have allowed innocents to die or be executed.
The CSI television franchise has probably been the most helpful piece of luck in recent years for support of budget requests in law enforcement. People see all that cool lab equipment and the dedicated staff that support the investigation of ‘what happened’ and object less to allocation of funds that they probably would othewise. What they don’t see and rarely hear about is that most certified labs still have backlogs of months for routine testing of evidence. Machines and supplies are astoundingly expensive. Calibration and upkeep are expensive. Training, mentoring, oversight and ongoing certification of techs to stay sharp in their technique and keep abreast of new findings and procedures is expensive. How many shortcuts are taken? How much is missed or lost through overworked or under trained and supervised techs? How much is purposely mishandled or presented? Check the Innocence Project’s records. Not a large percentage, by any means, but significant to those victimised. Too few investigators, not enough supervision or oversight, not enough support. Some DA’s offices are more political than others, but getting convictions and at least the appearance of ‘getting the bad guys’ is a priority. And people are pretty strongly biased to trust the ‘good guys’ and assume that innocent people will be found innocent. So when a Mike Nifong turns up in North Carolina or nineteen men in Dallas are exonerated after many years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit, when a man who died in prison is shown to have been innocent, we are surprised and outraged. How do we put a value on the time and misery experienced by those people? How do we keep it from happening again? How many more are still waiting and will they wait in vain because there are people and agencies at all levels that are invested in not finding or having the truth come out? How much do we care?
On the flip side, how many victims are vicitmised again when their case doesn't have a high enough profile to warrant the time and expense of the full attention of a DA's office? When there aren't enough trained investigators, or court calendars are impacted because of judicial vacancies and cases time out before they come to trial or get pleaded out because the volume of the case load is just too great?
Many potential reasons for mistakes or wrongdoing to be covered up. Mistakes, misconduct, considerations of compensation for the victims. Concern for loss of faith in the justice system by the citizens and the systemic implications of that. People make mistakes. Overworked, under-trained or under-supervised people make more mistakes. Biased people or those with ulterior motives make intentional mistakes and rationalize them. Time considerations come to bear. There are only so many hours in a day, so many staff, so much budget for supplies. And so the backlogs grow. And no way of knowing which one or combination of those tests may be crucial to a correct finding and which are merely routine and supportive.
The first jury case I sat on took us two weeks to hear and twenty minutes with one ballot to set a nineteen year old kid free on a charge that should never have been filed if the DA’s office and investigator had been doing an honest, adequate job. The investigator lied through his teeth on the stand and we all saw it. The accuser lied through her teeth, and we all saw it. The case had holes big enough to drive a truck though, they didn’t come anywhere near to proving their case. We gave him his freedom, but we couldn’t give him back the eight months that he’d been sitting in jail waiting for us to hear the evidence and make the determination. We couldn’t give him back the job he’d lost or make up for whatever he experienced in jail. We couldn’t give him back the time with his son during that formative period. We couldn’t even weigh in on our strong, unanimous feeling that custody of the child he’d been accused of kidnapping should go back to him and his family with appropriate social services support. There was no forensic evidence in that case, just what should have been straightforward investigation, analysis, weighing of statements and supporting actions of the parties involved. That it got as far as us was a profound failure on the part of law enforcement.
The last jury was a bigger one. Capital murder. One sister had murdered another under special circumstances. Seventeen of us winnowed from a pool of over four hundred. Two months of hearing testimony. A full courtroom staff four days a week, $20 a day for the sixteen of us who stayed throughout the trial, one assistant DA, two pro bono defense attorneys. Lunches and escorted transport for the jury during the ten or more days we deliberated on the guilt and penalty phases. Witness fees, processing and presentation of eighty pieces of evidence, (the first thing we did after electing a foreperson was make the poor bailiff schlep all eighty pieces up to the jury room so we could see them and refresh our memories). Expensive trial. And a lot of the evidence ended up being superfluous, but they had no way of knowing what we would need and we were much happier having too much to wade through than having to wonder what we might be missing if there had been less. It was a careful, thorough and professional case put together and presented honestly and defended honestly. Polar opposite of my first experience and went a long way toward reestablishing my faith in the system. Everyone involved did the best possible job, what few questions we had weren’t central to the case and wouldn’t have affected but one answer on the questionnaire and made no overall difference. As difficult as the situation was, we had what we needed to make the right decision and be absolutely sure that we were correct. I would have trusted anyone I cared about to that group of law enforcement, investigators, lawyers, court, staff and jurors. But then I hear the horror stories of people stuck on juries with petty, sloppy, inattentive or obstructive people and thank my lucky stars that I haven’t had anything to do with any like that. But those cases were decided too.
How much do we value justice if we’re not willing to participate honestly in the process? Dodging jury duty is almost as much a national pastime as fudging on taxes. How much do we value justice if we turn aside when it’s merely tedious or inconvenient, much less when it’s hard and there are significant consequences? How much do we value justice if we allow abuses to stand or to leave systemic issues like inadequate budgets, vacant judgeships, or lack of oversight or support unaddressed? How much are we willing to contribute, personally and financially so that we can say with reasonable honesty, ‘With liberty and justice for all’ ?
We seem to have become a culture of avoidance, of shortsightedness, of punting problems down the road for ‘someone else’ to deal with to avoid liability and frankly, to avoid nuisance. I feel like a lot of Americans have taken the wrong lesson from past circumstances and judged some outcomes as not worth the trouble of the struggle in light of the narrow view of consequences to some of the participants. We’ve seen that things are often complicated and difficult and if something goes wrong someone gets blamed and we want to avoid that. Not unreasonable, but where do we draw the line? So many of us stand on the sidelines and let someone else step into the line of fire and take the heat. When we’ve allowed all the mundane things above to get so out of hand I don’t suppose it’s surprising that when the big questions and issues crop up we don’t want to tackle them and risk being blamed for the results or the unintended consequences. Some of us use calming appeasement words like; ‘Move on.’, ‘Look forward, not back.’, ‘Take steps to see it doesn’t happen again.’, rather than taking steps to address the situation, deal with the root of the problem and do what we know is right.
Our country’s last administration not only tortured prisoners, they tortured innocent prisoners that they were fully aware knew nothing substantive. I believe that we have to destroy the presumptions and the credibility of their arguments and justifications in the full light of day, once and for all. To show how truly reprehensible, pervasive and un-American those actions were. There will, of course, be a few wingnuts who screech and cry foul, try to change the subject and claim that it’s all a partisan plot bent on revenge, (which is certainly what they would do). But they’re going to screech about something anyway, and at least three positives would come of it: We can look ourselves collectively in the eye afterwards knowing that we had done the right thing. The credibility of those who advocated these positions would be severely undermined if not destroyed outright in the public eye, so it would be much harder for them to build support to reconstitute in a few years and try again based on the precedent they’re presently trying to establish, which is what they’re planning now. And finally, we would be able to stand in front of the world being America again. America the good. America the just. Instead of America the degenerate, weaseling bully.
There are the apologists and appeasers among us who are frightened of any boat rocking. They’d prefer to keep an even keel even if it means going over the falls they can't quite see. Any confrontation seems dangerous and not worth the anxiety or risk to them. Some will literally do almost anything to avoid unpleasantness, and getting to the bottom of wrongdoing, especially when there’s a lot at stake, can be very unpleasant. It can even be dangerous. Sometimes livelihoods or even lives are threatened. Undercover agents live in peril, or are unmasked, negating their value as well as possibly putting their lives and others at risk. Witnesses can be endangered, whistle blowers intimidated, bankrupted and discriminated against. Should we just roll over and hope that the predators will just go away and not come back, or just hope that we can make ourselves small enough so they'll eat someone else next time?
I’m seriously starting to have concerns that-‘Because it’s right.’, Because America doesn’t stand for that.’, (in either sense), or ‘Because we have obligations.’ might not be enough to get us to take action.
I want to have faith that we’ll stand up and do what’s right. I want to believe, and I do believe, that when everything is laid out in the open, the vast majority of Americans will strongly support enforcing our laws and put paid to the sneaky, repugnant rationalizations that were used to justify torturing in our names and lying to us about it. As powerful as McCarthyism was, people turned away from it when they saw enough of what was really happening. I have faith that people will do that again.
I’m getting used to being proud of being an American again, being from the land of the free, home of the brave. Native to a country that, when push came to shove, stepped up and elected the right man for the job of leading us. I don’t want to give that up. We do things that others can’t. Because it’s hard. Because it’s right. Because we’re America.
I guess the biggest question I have is: It’s our country, our laws, our values, our constitution, our reputation. What are we going to do about it?
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“If you don’t stick to your values when they’re tested, they’re not values, they’re hobbies.” Jon Stewart
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