The Truth Theory

The criminal justice system in America is, like many American institutions, viewed with an ignorant arrogance by many Americans and condescension or contempt by much of the rest of the world.

Our system has many flaws. Despite its professed blindness, for example, the system moves swifter and more forgivingly for those with money. Despite our professed "freedom", for another example, so many things are illegal in this country that our courts are correspondingly clogged. We're all criminals; it's just a matter of whether we're caught.

But the biggest flaws are these: our system is institutionally founded on two absurd premises. The first is that evidence of guilt is irrelevant in convictions. The second is that evidence of innocence is irrelevant in overturning convictions.

How can evidence of guilt be irrelevant when a jury decides whether to convict? The O.J. Simpson murder trial was the perfect example. The system is tasked with judging whether or not the state proves guilt. That makes sense. But the verdict is based not on whether guilt was proved, but rather on whether all of the proper forms, rules, and etiquettes were followed perfectly.

Because of this loophole (or black hole), which is the expensive expertise on sale from high-priced defense attorneys, O.J. Simpson walked free. Instead of explaining how a glove with the victims' blood was found at Simpson's house, for example, the defense instead concerned itself with establishing that the detective who found the glove had used the word "nigger" in the preceding decade.

Whenever a conviction is overturned on a "technicality", this same dynamic is at work. The issue is not the truth, but rather the protocol. If any part of that protocol is violated, the guilty walk free.

Ask yourself this: what if Mark Fuhrman, the racist detective, had planted that glove? What should the result have been? Should O.J. have walked free? Most people would say yes. The justice system certainly would. But believers in "The Truth Theory", as its called in legal circles. would say no.

Believers in this theory, and I am certainly one, would say that attempting to frame a guilty man should NOT result in that guilty man going free. The corrupt detective in question should be fined, fired, perhaps imprisoned. But the guilty should not go free. Verdicts should be about truth, not about human corruptibility.

In many cases, however, the flaws, mistakes, and corruption of police are paid for by society as a whole and by victims' families in particular. The Simpson murder case was only the most extreme and absurd example of this rejection of truth in favor of form.

As for the second major flaw, how can evidence of innocence not be relevant to securing release from wrongful imprisonment? For the same reason that the first flaw exists; the system is directed to prize form over truth.

If, for example, a DNA test proves that a convicted murderer was actually innocent, most rational people would swing the doors open and dig into the general coffers to atone for this monstrous mistake. The system does not. Ironclad evidence of innocence means nothing; Again, only form is relevant to the system.

Therefore, to overturn a conviction, the system requires proof not of innocence, but rather proof that the original trial was unfair. Again, most of us simpletons would say that whenever an innocent person is convicted of a crime, the trial was unfair by definition. But lady justice would dissent.

To the system, a person is not guaranteed an accurate verdict; they are guaranteed a fair trial. So even if a trial results in a wrong verdict, that is irrelevant as long as the trial was fair.

For example, if a defendant's lawyer was later found to not have a law licence, or to have slept through large portions of the trial, or to have been drunk, then the trial may be considered unfair. But if these things did not happen, then the conviction stands, regardless of ironclad evidence of innocence.

An old adage has it that "innocence is the best defense". In most walks of life, those are wise words to live by. If you are in a situation where you pre-emptively ask yourself "how will I defend myself if someone finds out about this?", that is your conscience telling you not to do it, so that if anyone ever confronts you about it you can simply and authoritatively say "I didn't do it".

But in the "justice" system, innocence is no defense at all. And that's indefensible.