Objection!
A full night’s sleep hasn’t done much to take the edge off yesterday’s injustice. Although a full bottle of wine for dinner certainly didn’t hurt.
It’s one thing to receive/read messages from people who didn’t watch the trial about how dumb we all are who care so much about it (as though that could ever be a bad thing) … or how the prosecution clearly failed (really? It was pretty damn airtight, considering how little they had to work with and how mindblowing the “new science” really is) … or how that mud-smearing, see-what-sticks, crude, whiny and inept defense must have done a great job … or how defensive everyone is about the jury’s decision, right or wrong, because that’s our justice system.
But if a “jury of my peers” is having two people out of 12 who went past 11th grade and four with an arrest to their names, I’d rather take my chances in Perugia with Amanda Knox, thanks, should I find myself in the klink. Clearly our merry band of average citizens saw the same evidence the rest of us did and processed (or didn’t process) it the same way. Is that the system at work, or the system not working?
Someone had a really smart comment on Twitter last night, that the jury system blows and people aren’t educated or smart enough for this BIG responsibility. Well, that’s MY comment, because even my mind was blown at just the jury instructions. 🙂
But the comment I saw was that we should abolish the jury system as-is and have law students from around the country sit in on trials. They should have a minimum number of hours logged/number of cases as kind of an “internship.” That way, they can see justice at work before they ever get to practice law.
Knowing that a friend JUST passed the Virginia bar after about a dozen tries, I think that makes sense. Nothing like putting due process to work to make something stick in your brain. And I’d feel way better having a bunch of law students deciding my fate.
Now, before I receive another message that makes me want to procure a weapon and use it, I absolutely believe we are better off having 10 guilty men go free than having one wrongfully convicted. But I could get more time for HINTING at becoming a Casey Anthony vigilante than she will serve for, as I believe the evidence proved beyond any sort of doubt, suffocating her daughter and tossing her into a swamp to rot. And THAT is what I have a problem with.
These are the same people who elected Rick Scott as my governor. So yeah, I get a little touchy when it comes to the “hanging chad” state. What’s next, my state is going to fall into the Michele Bachmann for president camp? And people still want to challenge me on not having faith in the judicial (or any other) system?
Anyway, make fun of me if you must for actually feeling passionate about something, even if it supposedly has nothing to do with me. And snarl at me all you like that I’m calling out the jury’s decision as NOT the right one and writing off this case as too sophisticated for the bulk of the unwashed masses. But I’m getting a little tired of having to rely on prayer and Karma and, ultimately, God to reward the just, punish the evil, and to let wrongdoing appear to remain rewarded until such time arrives.