Thoughts brought about by the PSU scandal

[lionkingcmsl]

At one time we, in this country, had a quaint system of justice: You were charged in an orderly manner of the crime you allegedly committed. You were deemed innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, in a court of law, by a jury of your peers. Your sentence, if found guilty, was a fair and just one. You had avenues of appeal.

This was considered just and fair until fairly recently.

Now that system of justice has been replaced with:
A. You are guilty until proven innocent beyond all possible doubt.
B. Your court will be that of public opinion and mass media.
C. If a court of law and a jury of your peers does find you innocent, but the court of public opinion still finds you are guilty, you are still guilty.
D. Your punishment will be the shame heaped upon you and will follow you to your grave. No absolution is possible.
E. There is no appeal process.
F. You do not have to be charged with a crime for A to E to apply. Just the hint of possible wrong doing, omissions or errors will cause the process to begin.

How and why did this happen?

Comments

[xianjaguar.livejournal.com]

It happened in the 80's, when Megan's Law went into effect. Back when people started to crucify anyone who had an under-age girlfriend (ie, a 22 year old guy dating a 17 year old girl, and the 22 year old guy goes to jail for it, because oh noes, they had consensual sex).

Now, the fervor has grown to the point where a person under 18 can accuse ANYONE of "molesting" them (whether it is true or not), and everyone in the world will be against that accused person. Because kids never lie, and because kids are always perfect, yanno.

Don't get me wrong, people who actually molest children are scumbags. But this whole witch hunt has to be kept in check. It's getting to the point now where men are afraid to even help lost children in the city, for fear they'll be accused of "child snatching". So men will walk right by a frightened, crying (and hurt) child and do nothing, because they don't want to be falsely accused of anything improper.

[lowen-kind.livejournal.com]

And is the reason I do not give out candy at Hallowe'en.

It would be so easy for some kid to accuse the "old" single guy, who likes lions, of something nasty, for whatever reason.

[torakiyoshi.livejournal.com]

If you ask me, Officer Thompson deserves every bit of the punishment under the court of public opinion. Beating and Tazing a retarded man to death (he tazed him multiple times - some reports say up to fourty shocks, and he's not the only cop to do this in Spokane around that time) is unacceptable. Living with the stigma and shame of it is infinitessimal in comparison to what he did to Otto Zehm. We need to go after more of the criminally violent cops in Spokane, the same way.

[lowen-kind.livejournal.com]

?

You caught me off guard with this.

I was referring to Penn State University.

[torakiyoshi.livejournal.com]

It's a local, highly publicized case. Thompson was just found guilty of murder. His lawyer is pushing to have him released on bail while waiting for sentencing, and has demanded to interview the jurors because an alternative juror wrote to him that he was "shocked" at the verdict. Therefore, all of the jurors' opinions are highly suspect, says the lawyer for the defense.

Thompson is a police officer who killed a retarded developmentally disabled man, Otto Zehm, ten years ago, because he had gotten agitated at the ATM and two old women thought he was trying to rob it. Thompson intercepted Zehm coming out of a nearby C-store, clubbed him, and tazed him multiple times until he died.

Public opinion strongly agrees with the decision of the jury, mostly because Zehm is not the only person in Spokane to have died at the hands of a cop under suspicious circumstances. There have been at least five other such killings in the last ten years, and three tazer-related killings as well. I don't remember if it was Zehm or someone else, but there was a man who died after fourty tazings. All of the victims were either racial minorities, or disabled, and yet Spokane city and county leadership are doing nothing to deal with this clear bias and corruption. Citizens appealed to the city council for an independent ombudsman, and the city staunchly insisted that Police Internal Affairs is adequate to the situation. Then why did it take ten years to bring Thompson to trial? And why is no one arranging trials for the other killings? The jury of public opinion is strongly against the cops here.