On Mar 25, 8:59 am, "CWLee" <cdubya...@post.harvard.edu> wrote:
> Several (7-10) youths of one race attacked (apparently
> unprovoked, other than being of the "wrong" race) 3 youths
> of another race, in a public park. The victims survived,
> one with apparent very serious injuries. News reports
> suggested that the key witness in the park, who initially
> identified who did the hitting and who did the cheering on,
> suffered vandalism of car and home, and received other
> threats intended to preclude testimony. The key witness,
> for reasons not clear, either didn't testify, or testified
> with much less useful information, and the charged
> individuals were given very light sentences (something like
> 30 days of home probation.) Widely viewed in my circle of
> friends as an example of gang intimidation being used to
> create a gross injustice.
I agree with you about the apparent injustice of the situation, but it is important to keep in mind that it is society that has created and perpetuated that injustice, not the legal system. If we were to allow convictions on lesser evidence or e.g. in secret tribunals without constitutional protections (a la Guantanamo) then even further and worse injustices would be (and are being) perpetrated in the long run.
Your example is a classic of the type of social evil that inspires literature and movies and, ultimately, if it gets enough people feeling angry and oppressed by the tyranny of such gangs, they do something about it, either by building a neighborhood consensus that DOES have the courage to challenge them in court and get convictions, or by less beneficial means, including riot and civil war. The cops can only do so much; in reality, the "order" part of "law and order" depends on the majority of people in a given area believing in and supporting the law as their means of redress of grievances rather than taking the law into their own hands. When the majority of the public stops believing in the rule of law, all bets are off. The law is an imperfect tool but it is a hell of a lot better than Hutu vs. Tutsi, or Shiite vs. Sunni, or whatever us vs. them warfare results in a society where the rule of law has broken down.
The only way we can prevent that from happening, not just now in a moment of crisis but really at all times, is if the people affected by such violence believe in the legal system enough to come forward and provide the needed evidence to convict the perps even at risk of their personal safety; they have to realize that if they don't come forward, then in the long run, their personal safety is even more in danger due to the further lawlessness that results. Sometimes such testimony can only happen after a disastrous war where lots of innocents _do_ get killed, but the good guys win; the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals are a prime example, as are the continued efforts to hunt down and try the remaining perpetrators of the Holocaust, which depend on testimony of their living victims.
Anyway, you have raised an important issue and I thank you for the opportunity to comment on it.
--
This posting is for discussion purposes, not professional advice.
Anything you post on this Newsgroup is public information.
I am not your lawyer, and you are not my client in any specific legal
matter.
For confidential professional advice, consult your own lawyer in a
private communication.
Mike Jacobs
LAW OFFICE OF W. MICHAEL JACOBS
10440 Little Patuxent Pkwy #300
Columbia, MD 21044
(tel) 410-740-5685 (fax) 410-740-4300
No comments:
Post a Comment