Personal bafflement
This and this give me cause to wonder why it is that here in New Zealand alleged miscreants in two key sectors of the justice system are given a "get out of jail free" card that is denied to the rest of our society.
By this I mean that the following seems unjust to me...
If I, as an employee, engage (or are alleged to have engaged) in misconduct or criminal activities against my employer, or society in general, I will be pursued with the full force of the law until proven innocent or convicted (as appropriate) regardless of my employment status. In short quitting my job is no protection from investigation and legal action against me.
However, the case linked to above, and others recently involving police officers, seem to indicate that in our society, those charged with administering justice have any pending action against them dropped if they resign their position. In the case of the Judge, he gets a payout of somewhere north of $800,000.
Now I'm not saying the judge has done wrong (that hasn't been proved), but to me the fact that he wants to escape the process seems to imply that there is something there that he wants to hide, and we'll never know what it is. It has been suggested that he simply didn't want to go through the long and involved legal process to prove his innocence, and with $800k in his pocket he can probably retire and never work again quite comfortably - I know I could!.
But to precede his resignation with strenuous attempts to stop the process against him, leads me (and I suspect, others) to suspect that he has something he desperately wants to hide.
The same suspicions apply to various cops (including the recent Deputy Commander) who were accused of wrongdoings of various types and elected to retire rather than face the music.
Is this a case of those in the Justice System giving themselves a benefit that is denied to other citizens?
By this I mean that the following seems unjust to me...
If I, as an employee, engage (or are alleged to have engaged) in misconduct or criminal activities against my employer, or society in general, I will be pursued with the full force of the law until proven innocent or convicted (as appropriate) regardless of my employment status. In short quitting my job is no protection from investigation and legal action against me.
However, the case linked to above, and others recently involving police officers, seem to indicate that in our society, those charged with administering justice have any pending action against them dropped if they resign their position. In the case of the Judge, he gets a payout of somewhere north of $800,000.
Now I'm not saying the judge has done wrong (that hasn't been proved), but to me the fact that he wants to escape the process seems to imply that there is something there that he wants to hide, and we'll never know what it is. It has been suggested that he simply didn't want to go through the long and involved legal process to prove his innocence, and with $800k in his pocket he can probably retire and never work again quite comfortably - I know I could!.
But to precede his resignation with strenuous attempts to stop the process against him, leads me (and I suspect, others) to suspect that he has something he desperately wants to hide.
The same suspicions apply to various cops (including the recent Deputy Commander) who were accused of wrongdoings of various types and elected to retire rather than face the music.
Is this a case of those in the Justice System giving themselves a benefit that is denied to other citizens?