The complexion of justice
Jesus Christ teaches: “Judge not, or you too will be judged.” Matthew 7:1. Why then would anyone want to become a judge? Please don’t misunderstand me in case you recognize me. My father had one and my late brother retired as a judge of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. In no way have I been disloyal to the family.
In my junior year in high school, that was half a century ago, we were given time to prepare for the end-of-year exam. The class was so noisy that the school principal repeatedly came to shut us up. With the help of my half-fool and peanuts rule, he was launching missiles across the classroom. One boy decided that he had had enough. As he stepped over an empty seat in his attempt to get to me quickly, the school principal once again showed his face through the door. Given the standard of discipline in those days, he was caught red-handed disrupting the class and was duly punished. But as everyone in the class knew that day, I, who started it all, escaped punishment.
In my early teens, I realized that I always ended up suffering more if I tried to retaliate. Therefore, I was forced to stop it. A great demonstration of this happened later in life when my first wife opened up and confessed that she was not a human being, but a spirit that took human form. That was the end of the marriage, especially after recounting some of the havoc she had caused in my life. She definitely wasn’t the kind of wife I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I moved out and left everything at her house. In addition, I changed the registration and insurance of my personal car to her name, I changed all the brand new tires before giving it to her as a gift. My thought was that although she deserved punishment, only GOD Almighty could adequately reward her. She had no intention of personally lowering her standard of living.
Four years later, one of his closest associates wanted me to intervene in his marriage, which, by mutual agreement, would end at the end of the third day. Her husband was a friend. It turned out that she was right in assuming that I could persuade her husband to give her marriage a second chance. She said that my ex, exercising spiritual powers, cast an accident spell on my new car. Despite his powers, she was the one who had the accident. The car I gave her didn’t work out well for her and she decided to sell it. The man presented as the buyer, got away with the car. If the police had caught him, they would have charged him with carjacking. On the contrary, I thought that the LORD GOD wanted him to have the car. My point is that even with the best of intentions, dispensing justice is very risky.
How do you describe the situation when someone who sought employment in the Ministry of Justice, makes no effort to violate justice? I have come to regard the term plea agreement as synonymous with: justice for murder. It is a reversal of normalcy and all that is decent when a prosecutor is bent on getting a conviction, regardless. Most of the time, a convincing story is deliberately fabricated that the truth now appears to be a lie. It is enough that one is in the wrong place at the wrong time as proof of guilt. But, as long as the crime scene is not declared off limits, anyone unlucky enough will be found there. That one has to take a plea deal for a reduced punishment for a crime he did not commit.
It often happens that the sanity of the accused is in question. Improving his mental health would benefit the community and the individual in particular. However, the prosecutor’s life ambition is to obtain a conviction every time, even if it is a travesty of justice. What purpose is it serving?
It’s about time the plea deal idea was dropped. It cannot be true that we all do not experience qualms of conscience when an innocent person is forced to enter into a plea deal. Luxury what! Libby, accused of leaking classified information, turned down the plea deal that was offered to her. On what basis she made that offer, one would like to know. Prosecutors should go on retreats and devise a better way to deliver justice. It is detrimental to the conscience, to morality, to the welfare of the nation, when its innocent citizens are forced to plead guilty to a crime they did not commit. You don’t have to wait until it happens to someone dear to you. Have you figured out how you can sneak around that?