A Pound of Flesh at the Speed of Justice
Americans are told they have the greatest system of justice system in the whole wide world. We’re told this, of course, by lawyers. Well, America should have the greatest system of justice on the planet if price has anything to do with it. The cost of justice, as in hiring a lawyer to look out for you, is especially irksome if one is subpoenaed by a special counsel, like Robert Mueller. The legal bills of folks like Michael Caputo can ruin a person; an innocent person might even plead guilty just to stop the mounting legal bills. If I were ever to appear before some Grand Inquisitor like Mueller and I knew I were innocent, I think I’d go pro se; i.e. not hire a lawyer and represent myself. Not only that, I wouldn’t bill myself anything, so it’d be pro bono as well as pro se.
One of the problems with American justice is its speed. If the old maxim that “justice delayed is justice denied” is true, then contrary to what legal eagles will tell you, American Justice has serious problems. Take Hillary Clinton. She gave her speech at the U.N. in which she addressed the matters of her private email account and her “homebrew” server back in March of 2015 (video, transcript). However, nearly three and a half years on and we see no justice, even though any fair-minded judicious person would at the least suspect that Clinton has committed numerous felonies. Many persons have languished in prison for having done far less than Hillary, but the old gal hasn’t even been indicted, and in a nation that claims equal justice for all. Sad!
A recent incident abroad throws into stark relief the snail’s pace of American justice, and it occurred in the land that gave us the Magna Carta. I refer to the case of Tommy Robinson, citizen journalist and anti-Sharia activist who on May 25 was arrested, tried, convicted and jailed for thirteen months in five hours.
On May 30, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson interviewed British “rebel journalist” Katie Hopkins, who dilated on the unseemly speed with which Robinson was carted off to “gaol,” (that’s British for “jail,” for those of you on the coasts). Robinson’s crime: the heinous act of committing journalism. What concerns Hopkins is the apparent death of freedom of the press in jolly old England. What appalls this American is that the British government is “stealing” 13 months of a man’s life for standing outside of a courtroom. Seems like it should have taken more than five hours to do that, but you gotta watch this video:
On May 31, National Review ran Douglas Murray’s “Tommy Robinson Drew Attention to ‘Grooming Gangs.’ Britain Has Persecuted Him,” which gives us background on Robinson. On June 4, Carlson interviewed Murray about the Robinson affair, and Murray was careful to tiptoe around the issue, not wanting to violate any British gag orders:
On June 4 at the Washington Examiner, Dan Hannan (Member of the European Parliament for South East England) provides a counterpoint to Hopkins and Murray in “The real story, and why Tommy Robinson belongs in prison.” Despite a temporary lapse in sanity in 2008 when he endorsed Obama, Mr. Hannan’s positions are usually quite sound. For Americans outraged by the speed with which Robinson was imprisoned, read Hannan’s short article:
Here is how the judge in that earlier case rounded off his judgment when giving Robinson a suspended sentence almost precisely a year ago: “In short, Mr Yaxley-Lennon [a.k.a. Robinson], turn up at another court, refer to people as ‘Muslim pedophiles, ‘Muslim rapists’ and so and so forth while trials are ongoing and before there has been a finding by a jury that that is what they are, and you will find yourself inside. Do you understand?”
Hannan makes some good points, but my point is this: The little guy gets “justice” right quickly, while the ruling class and those in the permanent bureaucracy get another kind of justice, and only after lengthy trials, stays, and appeals, and that’s only if they’re prosecuted.
If the Deep State malefactors and careerist politicians who have conspired to hobble President Trump are made to face the music and account for their crimes, it would go a long way toward ending the “two-tiered” justice system we have and establishing a single tier for all. And it’d be nice if such an accounting doesn’t take forever.
Jon N. Hall of ULTRACON OPINION is a programmer from Kansas City.