Pubdate: Tue,  8 Apr 2003
Source: Amarillo Globe-News (TX)
Copyright: 2003 Amarillo Globe-News
Contact:  http://amarillonet.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/13
Author: Greg Sagan

JUSTICE AND DECENCY RESIDE IN CITIZENS' HEARTS

Last week, visiting judge Ron Chapman finished the evidentiary hearings in 
the 1999 Tulia drug bust by recommending that the Texas State Court of 
Criminal Appeals grant new trials to the 38 defendants who either were 
convicted or accepted plea agreements. This is a stinging rebuke for 
Tulia's citizens, who let this sorry drama unfold without challenge; for 
Sheriff Larry Stewart, who hired the state's lone witness; and for District 
Attorney Terry McEachern, who prosecuted these cases on such scanty and 
questionable evidence.

But the lessons to be learned extend well beyond any of these individuals.

The most important lessons here are for all of us.

In the 1960s remake of "Mutiny on the Bounty," Captain Bligh survives the 
mutiny and ultimately appears before an admiralty hearing. He is absolved 
of wrongdoing in the mutiny, but he is admonished for his excessive zeal in 
implementing the Articles of War - to wit, the flogging of his crew for the 
least infraction.

The presiding officer has this to say to Captain Bligh:

"No code can cover all contingencies. We cannot put justice aboard our 
ships in books. Justice and decency are carried in the heart of the captain 
- - or they be not aboard."

The excess of zeal so common in our nation in the prosecution of drug 
offenders has led us to an injustice here.

People who might have been guilty of violating these laws were swept up 
with others who were either not guilty or whose guilt was questionable, and 
all were subjected to treatment none of us should condone - conviction or 
coerced plea bargains on the unsupported word of a single individual who, 
in the final analysis, did not deserve to be believed.

Such treatment ought not be possible in any American court even if the 
individual giving evidence is a man of untarnished honesty and the 
defendant a psychopathic serial killer.

And rather than point at any single individual in the chain, I say it is 
the absolute obligation of every individual in the chain to prevent such a 
railroading of justice.

Police, prosecutors, judges, juries, even news media are, at least in the 
moral sense, individually and collectively responsible for the quality of 
justice we administer.

When it comes to certain crimes, we Americans seem to abdicate reason in 
favor of passion, and drug-related crimes are at the top of the list.

This is an error of society. We must all insist on objective standards of 
harm to the common good if we are to maintain the substance that backs up 
our self-image as a just society. That is why a man who has a beer in the 
privacy of his own home should be treated differently under the law than a 
man who drinks two six-packs before plowing his truck into 50 children in a 
school zone.

We must insist on this distinction because all of us are susceptible to its 
abuse.

A relevant analogy would be guns. I own a handgun - a Smith and Wesson .357 
Magnum. I don't kill people with it. I don't even threaten people with it. 
I use it to shoot paper targets at a shooting range.

I should be treated differently under the law than someone who uses an 
identical gun to rob, rape and kill.

If I am suspected of being the man who used such a gun for murder, it 
should not be possible for the state to convict me on the unsupported 
accusation of someone who may have a hidden interest in causing me trouble.

When a person can be jailed for 20 years or more on one man's say-so, the 
accuser must be utterly free of hidden agendas, vendettas, excessive zeal 
and honest mistakes - a truly superhuman expectation. If an accuser is 
sullied by any of these common conditions, any one of us can find ourselves 
behind bars for crimes we did not commit, victims of a system designed only 
to convict and not to exonerate, with little direct connection between the 
behavior and the penalty.

And when the abuse is ultimately ferreted out, as it was in Tulia, every 
one of us forfeits something valuable.

As I see it, the lesson here is for all Americans who serve as law 
officers, all Americans who serve in the courts, all Americans who serve on 
juries, all Americans who read about and ponder the significance of state 
power that exceeds its own boundaries - in short, a lesson for all Americans.

Justice and decency reside in the hearts of all law-abiding citizens.

Or these qualities do not reside here at all.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens