Criminal Justice
Last night after class, I was walking to the parking lot at the same time as one of my fellow students. This woman is somewhere in the range of age 25 to maybe her upper thirties. She is really made up - every week a fresh hair dye, lots of makeup, fake nails. She's mentioned she has "children," plural, but it's still hard for me to guess her age under the cosmetics. This student follows along in class, and asks relevant questions -- if she also suffers from the need to talk about her personal litigation situations and her employers in pointless, rambling stories in class as many students do. That said, she is certainly stealing less oxygen the rest of us are trying to breathe than many of my fellow in community college.
Purple Hair, let's call her (I have no idea what her name is), remarked that our Civil Litigation I class is a lot less work than Criminal Law. I haven't taken that one at this school, so I asked about that. Purple Hair went on to tell me that she has really strong opinions about criminals (and implied that those opinions are negative), and so she took the class hoping to open her mind a bit. And boy did it work, she said! The instructor has now convinced the woman that she has great potential working for the prosecution. I laughed a little at that (though I'm not sure I was supposed to!), and I said that it doesn't sound like she's opened her mind very much if the best result is that she now wants to work in prosecution. "I thought of going into criminal justice," Purple Hair said - whatever she may have meant - "but I'd have to make my motto, 'Don't come to me if you've raped or murdered anyone.'" I should've said, "That's nice," and walked away to my car, but of course I did not. I stopped walking, and I asked her about that.
Purple Hair and I got into a 10 minute discussion about our justice system, and whether everyone deserves a fair trial, and therefore competent defense. I observed that our system presumes that the accused are innocent until proven guilty, "It's kind of important," I noted, and I thought I was being a little dry with my under-emphasis there. "Yeah, well, I assume that anyone who's been arrested is guilty."
I asked her if she knows the story of John Adams and his defense of the British soldiers in the Boston Massacre. "John Adams?" She asked.
"Yeah, President John Adams."
"Is he the beer guy?"
"No... that's Samuel Adams."
But I told her to look it up, that he thought it was really important that those soldiers get a good defense, that if anything, that was a defense of our justice system as much as those persons. That's an example of why fair trials and competent defenses are especially important in society perhaps particularly for the accused who really are guilty. How we treat even the worst of criminals really says a lot about us as a people, and perhaps taking the point of defense of the accused is especially heroic because it's difficult -- but, literally, someone has to do it.
For just a glimmering moment, just one little spark in her eyes, I felt like I got through to Purple Hair, at least got her to consider this idea. I felt pretty good about that. I felt like Q at the end of TNG, hoping that maybe the puny little mind before me was willing to expand its thinking just a fraction in an unexpected way. I don't know if that's really true, or if Purple Hair thought about our conversation even as far as her to her car, but ya never know. I was happy we stopped to chat for a bit anyhow.
Trace
Purple Hair, let's call her (I have no idea what her name is), remarked that our Civil Litigation I class is a lot less work than Criminal Law. I haven't taken that one at this school, so I asked about that. Purple Hair went on to tell me that she has really strong opinions about criminals (and implied that those opinions are negative), and so she took the class hoping to open her mind a bit. And boy did it work, she said! The instructor has now convinced the woman that she has great potential working for the prosecution. I laughed a little at that (though I'm not sure I was supposed to!), and I said that it doesn't sound like she's opened her mind very much if the best result is that she now wants to work in prosecution. "I thought of going into criminal justice," Purple Hair said - whatever she may have meant - "but I'd have to make my motto, 'Don't come to me if you've raped or murdered anyone.'" I should've said, "That's nice," and walked away to my car, but of course I did not. I stopped walking, and I asked her about that.
Purple Hair and I got into a 10 minute discussion about our justice system, and whether everyone deserves a fair trial, and therefore competent defense. I observed that our system presumes that the accused are innocent until proven guilty, "It's kind of important," I noted, and I thought I was being a little dry with my under-emphasis there. "Yeah, well, I assume that anyone who's been arrested is guilty."
I asked her if she knows the story of John Adams and his defense of the British soldiers in the Boston Massacre. "John Adams?" She asked.
"Yeah, President John Adams."
"Is he the beer guy?"
"No... that's Samuel Adams."
But I told her to look it up, that he thought it was really important that those soldiers get a good defense, that if anything, that was a defense of our justice system as much as those persons. That's an example of why fair trials and competent defenses are especially important in society perhaps particularly for the accused who really are guilty. How we treat even the worst of criminals really says a lot about us as a people, and perhaps taking the point of defense of the accused is especially heroic because it's difficult -- but, literally, someone has to do it.
For just a glimmering moment, just one little spark in her eyes, I felt like I got through to Purple Hair, at least got her to consider this idea. I felt pretty good about that. I felt like Q at the end of TNG, hoping that maybe the puny little mind before me was willing to expand its thinking just a fraction in an unexpected way. I don't know if that's really true, or if Purple Hair thought about our conversation even as far as her to her car, but ya never know. I was happy we stopped to chat for a bit anyhow.
Trace