The Legal System Defiles Itself Again

The expressions dating from at least W. Shakespeare's time, about exacting a "pound of flesh," have just taken on new meaning in the American courts. And what better place for it, since those courts have long since also thrown to the pigs the original symbology of Justice being blind, though the Supreme Court still holds on to that image.

I never really understood the felicity of that image anyway, of the blindfolded woman operating the scales of Justice, and I always assumed that meant that, until all the evidence was in, the courts were impartial and so we are given, over and over again, the motto of the defendants being seen as innocent unless they are proven guilty. But from what I've seen, all too often the courts are not impartial at all, and the scales are not only heavily but even totally weighted against the accused, so that today to be accused of something automatically means one has been convicted, and, outside of the worst kinds of criminal cases, the trial is just a pre-determined formality, so as to keep lawyers, judges, bailiffs, stenographers, and all the rest of the performers extravagantly employed in the dramas and the rituals that a society looking the other way expects of them.

Cases associated with "wars" against anything are especially replete with instances of this. The legal system is never concerned with getting at the causes of problems but only with applying punishments related to the effects.

Right now, at the behest of the music recording industry, the legal system has a case going in which it is vividly showing just how blind its operations can get, in the ordinary sense of that word. A badly misled jury in Minnesota has deemed a woman named Jammie Thomas to be guilty of a crime that apparently is so ghastly and so against all standards of ordinary human conduct that in recompense she has been ordered to cough up one point nine million or else. One point nine million dollars!

The numerous government bailouts of recent times for infinitely greater crimes notwithstanding, that is still a lot of money to be expecting to extort from an ordinary citizen, which this woman appears to be. And the accusation against her? Downloading and sharing a couple of dozen songs on the Internet.

What I want to know about all this is, if they are serious, did anybody in that courtroom, while making this judgment against Ms Thomas, take into account her ability to pay 1.92 million dollars? The various record companies must have a desperate need for this money, so as to be able to make payments on their yachts and humvees and things, because otherwise, how could those outfits have been damaged to the tune of a cool $80,000 bucks per song that this jury believed this one woman had done to them?

I have always wondered whether a person's ability to pay is ever considered when I hear about cases in which people are being sued for out of this world sums, or have had huge fines levied against them.

The answer, most likely, is, "Not as much as somebody from Outer Space like you would like, dummy!"

I buy that, and I guess I am too in favor, instead, of a world in which such considerations are always charitably made, so that a blindly charged person who finds himself thrust into a courtroom doesn't in the end lose always having at least a roof over his head, peace and quiet, and enough to eat and some books to read.

It doesn't take much to have a world as decent as that, but far too many people disagree and so you have courts where the visibility is about what you would get in a raging Minnesota blizzard, and that is seen as being just the ticket.

Something different, however, could be operating just beneath the surface of this particular case, and, for instance, that jury could have taken refuge behind having bought the RIAA's protestations of pain and suffering while feeling that their quarry, Ms Thomas, could escape arbitrary and dire deprivation by declaring bankruptcy. But that deviousness speaks even less well of this trial.

Numerous people are outraged over this, among them I would guess all 35,000 of the other parties that the Recording Industry Association of America has identified as being "illegal downloaders" as well. But none of them has been dragged into the courts so that the RIAA can have the legal system do the dirty work on those transgressors, too. So the intent is clear. This woman is serving as an example. And this article in PC World claims that the Supreme Court does not hold with making such examples of people.

I am surprised.