Politics

I am find­ing the Blago­je­vich case frus­trat­ing because of the way most that peo­ple had pre­sumed him guilty before the case even began.  In the court of pub­lic opin­ion, he was found guilty a long time ago.  For sev­eral years now, the Chicago media has done noth­ing except daily declare him guilty of heinous crimes against the state and that he should rot in prison.  And while I cer­tainly think he is a cor­rupt politi­cian (as are prob­a­bly most of the elected offi­cials in this state), that does not mean he is guilty of these accusations.

In our court sys­tem (which is far from per­fect, but is still arguably the most fair in the world), you are pre­sumed inno­cent until proven guilty beyond rea­son­able doubt.  Many peo­ple in Chicago have seemed to agree that the pros­e­cu­tion did not do a very good job of mak­ing their case, but then turned around and act like he should have still been convicted!

A jury only gets a very nar­row view of the case.  They only hear the argu­ments and defenses that the judge allows to be pre­sented to them.  Based on that lim­ited scope of infor­ma­tion, if the pros­e­cu­tion can’t rea­son­ably prove guilt to the jury the first time, after over a year-and-a-half of work (at tax­payer dime), why should there be a retrial?  None of us was in the room with the jury, and none of us really knows who was tak­ing what sides or what infor­ma­tion they had to work with — how do we really know that the lone hold­out wasn’t the only one think­ing clearly and giv­ing hon­est, unbi­ased thought to both sides of the case presented?

Both the defense and the pros­e­cu­tion agreed to the jury mem­bers — if either side has a prob­lem with how those agreed-upon jury mem­bers then ruled, that’s not a rea­son to redo the case at the taxpayer’s expense (unless there were clear fail­ings of the jury to do their job prop­erly).  Yes, jus­tice should be served, but in our sys­tem, if the jury can’t find a per­son guilty, then jus­tice has been served.  At least in terms of this sys­tem — obvi­ously only God truly knows the con­tents of our hearts (and holds us account­able for it).