“Innocent
until proven guilty.” Such is the status, supposedly conferred upon all
American citizens, be they implicated in some criminal matter. This, in fact,
is one of the reasons our forefathers fled England, for many were persecuted,
without fair trial, often for allegedly holding political or religious views in
variance with official state doctrine. The same right to a fair trial was
denied to the victims of the Spanish Inquisition, which displaced many Jews
from the Iberian Peninsula. The United States is now widely regarded as a safe
haven for victims of such fascist persecution, and we have engaged in great
military campaigns, sacrificing countless of our own sons, to fight against the
spectre of tyranny and oppression, in this country during the Civil War, in
Nazi Germany, in Korea, in Vietnam and, ostensibly, all across the Middle East.
Although we have not had the military or economic resources, nor the brazen
foolishness to engage Russia in a third World War, we nonetheless remain
committed to opposing their harsh and repressive regime, at least
ideologically.
So, is this
right, in particular, to a defense of one’s innocence against accusation under
law, actually guaranteed to American citizens, and, if so, is it applied
equally to all? Only the most cynical conspiracy theorist would deny that we,
as Americans, enjoy liberties undreamt of in many countries. At the same time,
many Americans still believe, understandably and perhaps rightly, that not all
of the liberties many of us take for granted apply equally to themselves. Well
now! Let’s get to the point…do American citizens, accused of a crime, enjoy
this protection under law?
This is a
difficult question to answer plainly, for even if all citizens were treated
with fairness under the judicial system, which is almost certainly not the
case, America enjoys another freedom, perhaps our greatest gift from the men
who drafted the Bill of Rights, but also one of the greatest dangers of the
modern age: the right to freedom of speech, and freedom of the press in particular. The leaders who framed our
Constitution and its earliest amendments did not inhabit a world of fiber-optic
cable networks, wi-fi café’s, social media, smartphones and multinational
corporations subtly (and not-so-subtly) influencing, nay, controlling “the
press” in virtually all its forms.
In fact,
the sensationalistic news media of today is based upon an implicit assumption
of the profitability of the assumption
that the accused is guilty, playing upon the public opinion and sympathies
that it helps to shape, often in accordance with political and economic
motivations imposed by owners, advertisers and shareholders. Perhaps one of the
most controversial themes in the media right now pertains to accusations of
rape, sexual harassment and sexual assault, all atrocious or pernicious crimes
which completely undermine the sense of freedom and security our citizens ought
to enjoy in this nation, thereby undermining freedom itself. Part of the
controversy in these cases derives from the subjectivity of events, the burden
of proof, and, sadly, the small but unignorable tendency to fabricate these
allegations, and the political use to which such allegations, whether founded
or no, may be put.
Rolling
Stone has recently suffered some controversy over its publication of an alleged
gang-rape that now appears to be fabricated. If anything, sloppy journalism is
just as responsible for misleading public understanding of “the news” as is
outright deception. Reporters often use the term ‘alleged’ selectively and
interchangeably, until the point where the public presumably fails to
differentiate between, for example, “The Boston marathon bomber” and “alleged Boston marathon bomber.” This is
a perfect example of how public sentiment seeks immediately to pacify its
wounds with more blood, and understandably so. Perhaps this idea of
vengeance-as-justice is fruitless; as Heraclitus says, “Tainted souls who try
to purify themselves with blood are like the man who steps in filth and thinks
to bathe in sewage.” In any case, Massachusetts has a long history of using the
death penalty--- in the 17th Century, people were hanged due to
their religious affiliation. Surely, we are a hallmark of religious toleration!
In 1984, MA abolished use of the death penalty. However, the marathon bombing
of 2013, rightly seen as an act of domestic terrorism, does, in my view warrant
the death penalty, as it is really a federal matter and not merely a state
issue. Whoever did mastermind and execute the attacks surely wanted to instill
fear and terror, in Boston and across the nation. For this reason, however, it
does make sense to have the trial outside of Massachusetts. The basic reasoning
of the public seems to be: This was an atrocious crime, I have seen this guy’s
face on the news, therefore, he did it. Those who question Tsarnaev’s guilt, or
merely the legitimacy of the proceedings themselves, are sidestepped in their
concerns because the only thing that matters is how tragic the bombing was
itself. This is how US democracy utilizes the feeble-minded nonsense teachings
of Socrates to achieve an Orwellian double-think. Another good example is when
our Republican legislators tack two bills together, completely unrelated. By
endorsing the first bill, which any decent person with basic reasoning
faculties would endorse, somehow a majority is also giving the green light to
another law that has absolutely nothing in common, except that it furthers the
agenda of whoever drafted the bill in the first place. I personally believe the
Tsarnaev brothers were involved, but I admit that the root of that belief comes
from the fact that we have been
systematically instructed that they did it. This is called propaganda. In
some other nations, there is no question that the government will tell its
citizens whatever they want them to believe, a policy approved by Machiavelli.
But in the United States, supposed land of the free, of free speech and free
press, of the right to trial by impartial
jury, we are fast becoming disillusioned with the government and the media, to
the point where some of the more reflective citizens begin to mistrust everything that we are told, and that is
perhaps even worse than swallowing it all. President Obama’s speech after the
death of Nelson Mandela last year succeeded in putting a chink in my own shell
of cynicism, as he pointed out how the approach of cynicism is just as
fruitless as the approach of unquestioning belief. The problem for many of
these disillusioned cynics is that, mistrusting the official line, they immediately
fall prey to all sorts of conspiracy-theories and counter-propaganda. For
example, the evidence for an FBI cover-up, if not of the bombing itself, than
certainly of the Watertown triple-homicide of which the late Tamerlan Tsarnaev
is the alleged mastermind, is more convincing than the evidence of the Tsarnaevs’
guilt in the 2013 bombing; again, to a person of sound reasoning capacity. But
this does not prove Dzhokhar’s innocence, either! The people protesting for
Tsarnaev’s right to a fair trial are champions of American justice, the topic
of this article; the people claiming he is innocent or falsely accused,
however, unless they know something the rest of us don’t, are just as automatic
and uncalculated in their response as those who take his guilt for granted.
Now, the
problem with the rape accusations, as I believe I have stated, is where do we
assign the burden of proof? It is unfair and cruel to heap disbelief and
criticism upon a woman who has already undergone one of the most traumatic experiences
a citizen of a free country can be made to endure. However, if the allegations
turn out to be false, then the criticism has not been harsh enough, for false
allegation of rape is essentially a crime equally atrocious to rape itself: not
merely for the damage it does the accused, whose tarnished reputation may never
be salvaged even by his vindication (thus the title of this essay) but perhaps
more importantly, that, like the boy who cries wolf, the increased incidence of
false or misleading accusations can only add to the wall of disbelief that
victims of rape must bravely penetrate in order to get any justice. Of course,
on the other hand, a suspect may be ultimately found not-guilty, of rape or any
crime, when in fact he (or she) did commit the act (as has apparently happened
with two highly-publicized grand jury findings of late.) In this case, we would
be condemning a rape victim for lying, when in fact she was a victim twice,
first of rape, second of a trial with a false verdict, and now a third time, as
victim of the public’s assessment that she lied, tarnishing her own reputation beyond vindication…and
if, by chance, as is not infrequent, she should be raped again by another
assailant, any further accusations on her part would likely be taken with more
than a grain of salt, like that same boy when the wolf does in fact show up.
Well then! We can see why, perhaps, it is so difficult for women to come
forward.
In closing
I would like to bring our focus to the media circus that surrounds Bill Cosby.
The media almost seems doubly guilty, first of immediately presenting Cosby’s
guilt (which is becoming harder and harder to doubt) but also of criticizing
and scrutinizing many of these women who have come forward (some of whom do
seem, if not uncredible, than at least not of pure motive.) But what is the
reason that these women are all coming forward now? It seems peculiar, in the
midst of all the racial tension broiling across the nation, that one of
America’s most amiable and respectable black television personalities is
having, not just his deeds but his character called into question. Perhaps he
is guilty; but is this fact, like the Socratic axioms we have already pointed
to in our biased US justice policy, going to be used politically to cause the
masses (or at least the white masses) to jump to some conclusion that simply
doesn’t follow from the evidence? To brand an entire people as thugs and
hooligans, and thereby exonerate those who would execute them with prejudice
before they had reached maturity? Such, my fellows, would not be democratic
journalism, but the propaganda of a military-state.
These are
not easy questions, and they do not have easy answers; perhaps they do not have
answers at all. One thing is certain: if our media is not held to higher
standards, rather than rule of law, by the people, for the people, we shall
have mob-rules. Perhaps this is confused with democracy, but its proper Greek
term is ochlocracy, and John Adams
warned against such “tyranny of the majority” 225 years before the Boston
Marathon bombing.
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