Fog of Justice

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair,
hover through the fog and filthy air."
- Shakespeare, Macbeth

Everyone readily recognizes the "fog of war"; which conveniently excused the multi-trillion dollar mistake of the greatest minds in government, absolutely convinced, Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. However, in society's rush to judgement, on one recognizes the fog of justice, which also leaves a path of destruction.

The United Sates' war on crime has produced 25 percent of the world's prisoners, at a cost of $62+ billion a year, yet the U.S. represent only 5 percent of the world's population. Are people in the U.S. exceptionally evil, or is the fog of justice blinding us?

Warfare requires a mindset that the enemy must be neutralized at any cost. Our public guardians have declared "war" on crime, establishing an ironic parallel, and unintentionally, giving rise to a miasmic fog.

In one of many incidents, the Washington Post on the weekend of April 18th 1015, reported how the miasma manifests itself: "The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000." One of the many victims of this fog of justice was Santae Tribble, who served 28 years in prison for murder, based on FBI testimony about a single strand of hair, which many years later was found to be a dog hair. Fallacious testimony ad evidence is not exclusive to the FBI, it is a systemic fog in this war on crime.

Prosecutors, police and crime lab technicians think of justice and winning at all costs. Bear in mind, none of these warriors in the war on crime are promoted on acquittals; convictions bring praise and promotions. The more felony convictions an agency can chalk-up, the larger the budget to wage war on crime. Prosecutors do not see their careers flourish with "Not Guilty" rulings. To lose a case brings shame upon a pride-driven "justice" warrior. Nothing could be further from the truth when a jury is told, "this officer has no reason to lie." A distinct fog of justice sprawls through the halls and battlefields of our war on crime.

In a typical police action, once an arrest is made and a conclusion is drawn, perverse Rubicon is crossed. The investigation is driven to prove the conclusion, not to establish innocence. All too often, the case needs to be "tweaked" to conform to the conclusion, after all, "all is fair in love and war." People have to realize every war has its collateral damage.

The collateral damage of this war is too great to ignore. Not only are people losing their precious freedom and billions of dollars squandered, but society's soul is being compromised! This insanity has to stop, justice should be treasured, not bastardized!

11 May 2015

Robert H. Outman
Prisoner P-79939

http://betweenthebars.org/blogs/895