Wither Innocence

One of the great concepts bequeathed the world by the British was the revolutionary idea that every man, no matter the crime of which he was accused, was presumed innocent until he was proven guilty. This concept is now accepted if not practiced in nearly every country, and life without this critical bulwark against government totalitarianism is unthinkable in our bastions of liberty. And yet the idea is in fact under attack, in many different forms, and for myriad reasons. When such a vital freedom is threatened, it would be normal to expect the attack to come from some covert and secretive cabal, seeking to extend their power over the population for their own aggrandization. It is almost scarier to find that these protections have been willingly, even eagerly if unknowingly ceded in an attempt to assuage our fears. And while some of those fears are understandable, a fear of the unknown, fear of that that is beyond our ken, fear of the outsider and the stranger, we are also driven by a fear of the darkness that lurks within ourselves, a fear of what we dare not face and which can be hidden only in the deepest dungeons, and if the presumed innocence of our fellows must be the sacrificed to silence the demons within our breast, then we appear more than willing to pay that price.

Over the last few months, two cases have revealed our slide away from the heights of liberty. These cases while providing an almost ridiculous counterpoint to our slower descent into self-imposed serfdom, nevertheless reveal much about our indifference to the principles that are our greatest shield of liberty and freedom. Earlier this year,  a woman was accused of killing her own child in a selfish attempt to trade the burden of single parenthood for the carefree party-filled life she'd once known and seemingly craved once more. There was an outpouring of anger towards this young woman, and she was tried and convicted time and time over in the media; yet when finally brought before a jury of peers, she was found innocent of her crime - the prosecution could simply not build a case that established her guilt beyond doubt. While few people doubted that she'd lied many times and to nearly everyone about the facts of the case and her role in and knowledge of the events, in the end there was no compelling evidence that she had actually killed her own daughter, and the jury, I believe, did the right thing when they chose not to convict her. Her guilt, and the actual crimes she may have committed, distract from the more worrying issue here; the public trial of and later the threats against this woman were a sad violation of the concept that every accused criminal is innocent till proved guilty. When the freedom of a person, or their life even, hangs in balance, the burden of proof lies with the prosecution.

The second case, still at a pretrial stage was part of an earlier discussion, and is somewhat personal to me by virtue of the effect it has had upon my Alma Mater. Jerry Sandusky has been accused of molesting and forcibly raping young boys, a crime that if proved will likely see him spend the rest of his natural life in some form of imprisonment. But the key fact is that right now we have accusations and a Grand Jury indictment, not a conviction. The man, no matter how much his crimes may appall, is entitled to his day in court, and the presumption of innocence till proven guilty. And that proof of guilt must come in court, when he has the chance to face his accusers and challenge their evidence. However, few commentators afford him this curtsey; to be fair to them, perhaps Sandusky has done all he could to destroy his own credibility as an innocent man through his own interviews, and the general population when confronted by crimes of which he stands accused largely react with a lack of rational thought.

I have observed that many people, even a majority perhaps, react with great vehemence when forced to confront crimes against children, be it murder or rape. Perhaps it stems from outrage at such an injustice towards the most defenseless and innocent section of society, perhaps it is driven by an idea of the moral outrage that is expected in the face of these crimes, perhaps it is a fear that to not denounce the accused as a monster deserving of immediate lynching will suggest a sympathy for the alleged criminal and his actions. Whether the desire to bypass the path of slow justice is prompted by our inner angels or demons is moot; it weakens our greatest protection against capricious injustice and imprisonment, and the fact that it's done in the name of swift justice makes it even more dangerous. We do not react, in general with the same bloodthirsty fervor to man who might steal a trifling amount to keep his children from starving. But we cannot reserve our justice for the criminal who arouses our sympathy. Every person, good or bad, is and should be afforded the same protection before the law, and if we would suspend it in cases where the accusations appall us, inevitably we will find ourselves at the receiving end, convicted without trial and summarily punished, guilty by virtue of being accused.

While warnings of danger to our entire civil society may sound like the rantings of Cassandra, it's worth recalling that Cassandra's dire warnings were proved accurate when it was too late to prevent the destruction of Troy. And the writing is on the wall, if we would only stop to read the signs. When the agents of al Qaida brought down the Twin Towers, their actions launched the War on Terror, a nebulous poorly defined fight with an undeclared enemy. And in the name of security we imprisoned people on suspicion of terrorist actions, and ten on suspicion of terrorist plotting, and even on suspicion of sympathies towards terrorism. And since the people we arrested were "foreigners", from countries that hated us, we turned away while they were imprisoned in secret prisons in remote corners of the world and we pretended that they were being arrested because they were guilty. We were unfazed by the fact that they would not be tried, not even before military tribunals but would be left to rot in dungeons till the undeclared undefined war was over; after all they were not like us, and the fact that they were in jail was all the proof we needed to satisfy ourselves of their guilt. Now, a new law is proposed that would extend those same possibilities to all US citizens, complete with provision that would empower the government to hold anyone suspected of terrorist sympathies without trial till the end of hostilities. Imagine for a moment if this concept was used in the War on Drugs, which has been underway for over thirty five years with no end in sight. The War on Terror, with no clear protagonist and hence no real way to have an ending, may drag on as long or longer.

I have never embraced the libertarian concept that the government is some alien entity to be feared and destroyed. I believe that the government is nothing but our collective civic bargain, and that it can and will be anything we want it to be. But a government, like an soulless entity is programmed to increase its power, unless we actively remain a part of it. And when we abdicate our civic responsibilities and allow our prejudices to trump the procedures and principles of law, no matter how noble or fearful our motives, we move a step closer to a day when we will no longer have those procedures and principles to be our Aegis in our moment of need.