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Why Do We Still Call It Justice?

Pick up your paper, turn on your TV, etc., and there is no escaping it, justice has become a circus.

Everyone has his own bandwagon; everyone has his own slant on what is being touted as the "trial of the century". A sports personality, an officer of the law, a movie person, you name it, it is out there.

Would any of these events have gained as much attention if it weren't for the media pounding their drums every minute of every day?

Before it was brought to the attention of the public most of these figures were known to but a few people. However once the drummers began beating their drums, the whole world was aware of them. Now we come to the crux of the matter, will justice prevail, has justice prevailed? Will the personality manage to bring down the justice system or will the justice system prevail? Or will all the publicity help surface a new problem, of how our justice system really works?

Justice is subverted by those who pretend to uphold it. Attorneys out for a buck, plead to get people off who are guilty without a shadow of a doubt. Judges who are so entranced with the guilty party's world renown that they can't think straight. Is plea-bargaining really a help, whatever happened to- Do the crime you pay?
To the attorneys' who get people off with plea bargaining, no matter how outrageous, was the money worth it? Was your ego stroked enough? Or didn't you really understand the meaning of justice?

Our judges aren't judging on the evidence, our judges are indulging in trying to change society. That's not their job, they aren't social workers.

Our juries! Well therein lies the crux of the matter. If anything demands change, it is how we choose juries. These are supposed to be a jury of our peers, who are supposed to decide on the evidence presented. In many cases, if the juries are actually peers of the defendant, they are swayed by that fact. Juries are picked to listen to both sides and then render a verdict. Given that juries are supposed to be selected at random, given that both defense and prosecutions have a say in who will serve, given that much of the evidence is suppressed, given all that, the jury is handicapped at the onset. When a jury makes a decision based on emotion, it is a flawed decision. If a jury is not given or shown all the evidence, their decision is flawed. If a jury can be swayed to make a decision on anything but evidence, the outcome is flawed.

Since the judge is a professional would it help if juries were also professionals? Paying people to serve who have all the knowledge needed to render proper verdicts, as apposed to people who are not versed in the justice system and who tend to render verdicts based on their personal view of the person being judged. Can we cast our minds back a number of years to when a well-known personality was up before a jury of his peers and got off strictly based on the type of the peers chosen?

Is it time to do something about our justice system? Our jury system?

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