We wonder why people, especially the younger generations, have contempt for the system. We wonder why only 50% of potential voters vote in elections. When prosecutors (who are part of politics), politicians, political parties and even judges seem to be devoid of a care for justice as opposed to political expediency, why should we wonder. Unlike the 60s and 70s when the young rose up in protest against injustice, today they simply show contempt for the system, the law, and a disbelief that any consequences attach to injustice. The press would have us believe, as prosecutors do, that everyone accused is guilty. You sell more advertising that way.
It seems today that people are only concerned about leverage, political support, personal and political viewpoints and getting media time. Such abstract or absolute concepts as justice are merely held in contempt. They are considered corny, quaint and naive. Those who do fight injustice only fight it for their own constituency. Those from other groups be damned. The right and the left are both guilty. They both leap to conclusions based on their political demagogic imperatives. Examinations of the facts are thought to be naive and irrelevant. In this opinion piece on the Duke rape case the author points out that the right's outrage, however justified, is selective. How ironic that he then goes on to make a political point about the death penalty. When is somebody going to write about the injustices being done. Why are the people who are screaming about the death penalty and falsely accused death row inmates not screaming about the gross injustice done to the young men at Duke? Why are the people shouting about the sentences in the recent LA case of mob violence where three young white women were beaten senseless by a group of black teenagers shouting racial slurs, not also shouting about the falsely accused black men on death row and the prosecutors who put them there? Why are those angry about prosecutorial abuses in the Ramos and Compean case, not up in arms about those same abuses of young black men accused in the death penalty cases? Why are those infuriated about discrimination against immigrant workers (like the ACLU for example) not shouting about Ramos and Compean? Why are those who view racial profiling as abhorrent not screaming at the LA beating case? Why are those who rail against prosecutorial abuse and evidence tampering in the death penalty cases, not railing about it in the Duke or Ramos and Compean cases? Why are those who decry the injustice of light sentences for white perpetrators attacking black victims not decrying those sentences when a black mob attacks whites? Why are those against discrimination and those against racial quotas ignoring the quotas imposed on Asian students in prestigious universities?
One word answers all these questions- politics. Political expediency rules the decision-making of those from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to Rush Limbaugh. They all want you believe they stand for Justice. They don't. They stand for political agendas. The enemy of their enemy is their friend, even if the cause is unjust, and more importantly the friend of their enemy is their enemy. Thus Waller, Ramos, Compean, the girls in LA, the boys in North Carolina and many more are all caught in the crossfire. One side might defend them if the politics so dictate, while the other at best ignores them and at worst speaks against them. It would be nice if somebody stood for Justice, not just politics.
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No question that ignoring politics is somewhat living in a dream world. My issue is that the justice system, and justice itself, should transcend politics.
Robert Jackson, then Attorney General and soon to be Supreme Court justice and Nuremberg prosecutor said it best at a meeting of Federal Prosecutors in 1940 "If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his cases, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm—in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself."
Politics is certainly part of the system , but justice should be discussed as something more immutable than the fleeting political views of the day. To put it in simple terms it is just as evil to falsely accuse a democrat as a republican, no matter your political views.
Posted by: JR | April 12, 2007 at 03:27 PM
Politics is the nature of the game and the nonsense of ignoring the political system(s) is living in a dream world. We have political parties and we have voters and we have lobbies and we have offices to fill. Would you run someone on the Truth ticket? and then what would he stand for and how would he get bills passed? Get real.
Posted by: fred lapides | April 12, 2007 at 02:18 PM