Truth and Justice, “veritas et aequitas” as our Roman predecessors would have said, are the twin pillars upon which a system of law is built. The year 2011 has had its fair share of opportunities to get a better look at the legal system’s not so exemplary moments. The Amanda Knox case is only the most recent in the cadre of high-profile trials that have come to our attention recently. These trials demonstrate that what we tend to think of as a simple procedure actually displays a level of complexity that stretches beyond our usual comfort zones. The quest for Truth and Justice is not always an easy one, but it is in our shortcomings that we learn more about what these abstract nouns look like in real terms and learn how to fix problems.
Truth and Justice display in our past and future respectively. Truth is the knowledge of what has happened, and Justice is what should be done moving forward. The trial is to determine the truth based on evidence. The sentence determines what is just based on the conviction. On July 5, Casey Anthony was found not guilty of a crime many people believed she had committed. On Sept. 21, Troy Davis was executed for a crime many people believed he did not commit. For Anthony, a wealth of evidence was not enough to convict her of killing her daughter, and therefore she went free. For Davis, minimal evidence was enough to receive a conviction and a death sentence. Both cases raise doubts about the legal system, but only one of these cases was a true travesty.
Truth and Justice are manifested in our desires for the pragmatic and the ideal. We want to use notions of common sense to tell ourselves that life isn’t fair, but we also possess a deep yearning for what is right. Practically, the truth is not entirely knowable. In the courtroom or in life, all we have are memories and stories, both equally subject to varieties of perspective and bias. According to H. L. Mencken, “There is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.” This is why verdicts are given based on “reasonable doubt” and not on certainty, which is what allowed Amanda Knox’s appeal to go through.
This is where our pragmatic view of the past moves into our idealistic view of the future. Because we can’t know what has occurred for sure, we have to be careful about how we shape the future. The familiar phrase “innocent until proven guilty” then comes into focus. We use this maxim because, ethically, it is better to let a guilty person go free than to make an innocent person to suffer. The guilty that are let off are capable of redemption, but the unjust punishment of the innocent can never be reversed. Anthony may or may not have killed her daughter, but the jury determined that there was enough of a chance that she was innocent to let her go. This is the product of a healthy legal system. Davis, however, was executed despite the copious doubts that had been raised regarding his guilt.
We may never know whether Anthony was really innocent or whether Davis was actually guilty. The difference is that Anthony gets a second chance. The death penalty is an unflinchingly final judgment on a frustratingly unintelligible past. The proper administration of justice depends on the proper understanding of truth. Unchanging justice is not compatible with changing truth, especially when lives hang in the balance.
The death of Troy Davis is a definite low point in our legal history, but it is only when we see what is broken that we realize what needs to be fixed. Hopefully the specter of past misdeeds like this will improve future responses, and the next Troy Davis will get an Amanda Knox chance to find truth and seek justice.
