Greetings and Salutations....

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 19:08:03 GMT, "Leon"
wrote:


"Bob Schmall" wrote in message
...

The "liberal laws" could just as well have been applied by the juries to
find the accused guilty and put them in prison or kill them. It wasn't the
laws' fault--it was the juries'. You know, those peers of ours who are the
actual judges.


Well more often than not the jury does not get to rule on what they should
be ruling on. Meaning, the jury is not to decide if the guy intentionally
murdered the neighbor, they are to determine if it was an accident or not.
The fact that the guy cut the neighbor up and dumped the parts in the bay
was to play no part as to whether the murder was accidental or not. Draw
your own conclusion given "all" the facts.



Hum...I sort of recall this case, and I remember shaking my
head over it. I thought, though, that the problem was twofold.
Firstly, the perp was an old white guy with a chunk of cash.
Secondly, I thought it was a "not guilty by reason of insanity"
sort of verdict. It's not that he did not do it, but, that he
was crazy as a loon when he did it.
Now...I think that, in a case like this, he probably SHOULD be
put away in a home for the criminally insane for the rest of his
life, but, again, I don't know all the details of the case.
I think, though that the problem is less that of the laws
that are passed, as there are WAY too many of them, and, if actually
applied as written would be rather draconian. I belive that the
problem is based more in the way the court system has evolved over the
past thirty or forty years. The big roots of the problem seem
to be the willingness of the courts to plea bargain in order to get
"bigger fish" or to expedite the process; There is also the problem
that the whole concept of a "search for truth" seems to have gone
away. Both defense and prosecution lawyers appear to feel that it is
perfectly ok to lie, cheat and steal in order to win their side of
the argument. Juries are not given all the facts in a case, but,
only a very carefully selected set of facts that support each side's
contention as to how the case should be determined; There is the
increasing tendency for courts to "send a message" with a given case,
by either allowing fairly lax standards of evidence, or increasingly
draconian penalties for the laundry list of crimes that the person
has been convicted of; There is the (perhaps honest) attitude that
prison is not there the rehabilitate, but, simply to punish and
warehouse folks that bump up against the limits of society; Finally,
there is the continuing problem of economic justice. Like it or
not, the rich get one level of justice, and the poor get another.
I suppose I should take heart in the evidence of the OJ verdict that
says that this is not a racial thing...just a money thing. That
will even out the playing field as more and more people of color
achieve some level of economic success.
Back to the looting problem...that may well come from the
social stresses caused by the ever increasing distance between the
"haves" and "have nots" in America. We are still bombarded by
thousands of ads a day pushing consumerism and having "stuff" that
validates our existence. On the other side of the coin, there are
fewer and fewer sources that might point out that having "stuff"
does not make a person's life better, or make one a better person.
That sort of spiritual teaching is falling into disrepute in
America, alas. The bottom line is that there are more and more
pressures to fill that spiritual void with "stuff" and the economy
is making it harder and harder for folks to do so...which pushes
a person to the point of theft.
Now...just before the French Revolution, the penalty for
stealing a loaf of bread was death. Do we want to be that sort
of society? It is the "easy" thing to set up simplistic and
harsh rules to deal with lawbreakers. it is much harder to set
up a society that finds the best in its citizens, and brings that
out.
It is a complicated issue, and one that I was discussing
with an acquaintance a week or so ago. He feels, and I agree,
that America is at a crossroads. We can, as a society, decide
to run down the path of increasing extremities, decadance and
decay, or we can turn to the path of becoming that shining beacon
that folks THOUGHT we were at the time that France gifted us with
the Statue Of Liberty. It might be a harder path, but, in the
long run, it will do more than all the guns in the world to make
us safer from terrorism and decay, both internal and external.
Ok...I am stepping away from the soap box now.
Regards
Dave Mundt