Justice: A bulwark or a mirage?
Justice: A bulwark or a mirage?
By G.S. Edwin
JAKARTA (JP): O.J. Simpson's not guilty verdict created a storm in the USA. One group was jubilant and celebrated, another angry and furious.
High profile cases are a curse. They cause dismay that justice gets contaminated by circumstances: by fears, passions and prejudices of a society. Justice shows itself as an ally of the strong; twistable, vulnerable to money, fame and power; and seen, not as something majestically pronounced, but a scoop, out-bid and bagged by anyone who can hire high-priced lawyers.
Take the case of Rodney King, a black U.S. motorist. He was roughed up by police in public. This was captured on video camera and became one of the most watched videos in U.S. Yet the police, charged with assault and battery, were acquitted by the state court. It taxed credulity; because it meant that a video picture was not enough to prove guilt. Two of the policemen were later convicted and two others acquitted on federal charges. A quote of Groucho Marx, a U.S. comedian, from his picture Duck Soup (quoted by one of the columnists, in connection with O.J. case) more tellingly applies to King's case. "Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" Justice subverted or emasculated to condone violence?
Next, take the criminal cases against Tyson and Kennedy Smith (nephew of U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy). Both of them ended a date with an alleged rape. So the cases bore a mirror-image resemblance. Yet, Smith, with his handsome looks, patrician poise and endowed with his family halo, was coddled and exonerated. Tyson, with his reputation for women baiting and battering and his trade-mark killer-looks, was persecuted and convicted. Can there be a more vivid mockery of justice?
However, it would be fallacious to conclude that where money and fame are not involved justice is less errant. It is not so.
The ordinary and the indigent don't get justice, but a raw deal. A cynic would say: To the poor, as vulnerable as snails without shells, justice is as open as Shangri-La, Jakarta, is open to all.
Sometimes justice is made to run from pillar to post until it finally exhausts itself.
In the 1960s there was a sensational love-triangle murder case in India, involving a handsome husband who was a naval commander, his beautiful wife and a born don juan.
The commander's duties kept him at sea. The male attention his wife was paid was inexorable and irresistible. She slipped, but was so guilt-ridden and contrite that she confessed to her husband. The wronged husband packed his service revolver, went over to the man's house, who proved to be a treacherous friend, and shot him dead. The defendant admitted to killing him, but claimed it was an accident.
Bewitched by the handsome commander, resplendent in his white naval uniform and with a chest full of medals, deposing calmly; and by his wife, stricken and wilted, yet exquisite in her grief, the jury cared not a hoot for the dead victim. Taking a macho view, it acquitted the commander. The jury was hailed as "Daniel". But the trial judge was scandalized. He declared the jury's verdict perverse and appealed to the high court. A single judge awarded the death penalty. The commander appealed and a bench commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment. The cause for commuting the sentence was a mighty single word uttered by the accused. The police had recorded that, upon seeing the don juan when he answered the door bell, the accused greeted him with "hello".
The bench held that the first word spoken by the accused, a greeting, belied premeditated murder. The victim was killed because of an altercation that got out of hand. Thus, the defendant earned the benefit of doubt.
However, after justice gyrated temperamentally through all the loops, it received its coup de grace: the state pardoned the commander.
There was also another case, a recent one.
The chief minister (an ex-actress) of Tamil Nadu, India, celebrated her son's wedding. Carried away by her yearnings for film grandeur, tinsel pomp and frivolous glitter, frenzied minions built festoons, bunting and colorful arches either on the shoulder of the city roads or on parts of the road itself in the town of Madras, without prior approval from the city administration.
An encroachment. Angered by the "Who cares?" strong-arm defiance, a group of lawyers petitioned the high court, requiring that all such encroachments be removed forthwith. A forthright legal demand that could not be denied or evaded. However, justice smartly arose to the occasion. Though drowned in many words, the verdict simply said "A V.V.I.P. can do it".
However, the court did not stop there. It ordered the encroachments to be removed after the marriage.
A terrific left-handed compliment to justice. And an ingenuous repeat of the amiable and the ancient royal twaddle. Just another case of the doors of the stable being bolted after the horses had bolted.
It is ugly when justice bows. Then it is no longer true and tremendous; but dubious and diminished.
Nearer to home: the sadistic and repulsive crime in Bekasi that shocked society. When the case came up in court, the public was aghast that the defendants needed lawyers. "What for?" It was a vote of no confidence against justice. Lofty notions like "beyond reasonable doubt", "presumed innocent" and "benefit of doubt", are meant to make justice sacrosanct; but in the real world of litigation they serve only to obscure, delay and defeat justice.
"Justice delayed is justice denied" is not an idle wail: What did those nine months do for the O.J. trial? Made the crime and its victims seem remote and spent; and made the defendant relevant and helped him to successfully ingratiate himself. The time helped convert the courtroom into a political forum. It substituted the main actors: The plaintiffs turned from being just regular people to police; and the defendant from O.J. to race. Lawyers became demagogues, who equated justice with their own agenda and cut off oxygen to justice, tactically, yoking it to a word-mountain and willful obscurity.
Sensational failures of justice are bad, for mankind has no future unless justice is a bulwark. Because justice is the cornerstone of civilization, the cement for human bonding, and the foundation and anchor of a well-ordered society. So, immaculate, robust and sure-footed justice is the only hope for mankind, however dim or distant or how pervasive. To enthrone justice, however wishful thinking it may be, is up to the lawyers, who as responsible members of society have to play the stellar role. They should bring integrity and quest for truth into a courtroom; not slick skills and a debonair one-upmanship.
However, there are grounds for optimism that justice cannot be banished. For one, there are still persons like Flor Contemplacion, the Filipino maid, physically frail but spiritually a Titan, who gave her life for truth and to honor justice. She stuck to her confession for four long years in spite of many blandishments. To her, it was more shameful to try and escape the consequences of committing a crime.
And the ultimate fact is that the mirth of the wicked is brief. For, the wheels of justice may grind slowly but they grind surely and exceedingly fine. So, stripped of all trappings, human justice attempts to preempt God's judgment on the guilty, which is certain.