And Justice For All?

“My occupation now, I suppose, is jail inmate.” (Theodore Kaczynski)

Let’s take a trip down memory lane... back to a time when the grass was green, the air was fresh, and cell phones were huge. Let’s go back to the 1990s. Back then this guy named O.J. Simpson was the defendant in “the trail of the century”. He was accused of murdering his wife and her friend. While he spent time in jail during the trail, in the end he escaped conviction and went free.

Now O.J. Simpson is off to jail. Again. But this time he’s not just in jail for the duration of a trial. No, this time he’s been CONVICTED, and sentenced, to hard time in the slammer. What does this mean? Well it means 2 things. For one, it’s another instance of the public’s fascination with the wayward lives of celebrities. For another, it means there’s justice in the system after all. While I could waste our time talking about the former, I’ll instead try to say something meaningful about the latter.

I think (or hope) that we all know about O.J.’s exploits. From his murder trail (Alex isn’t the only one who can link), to his related civil suit, to his most recent “let’s steal sports memorabilia” trail.... and let's not forget his book 'If I did it'. So now that we're all up-to-date let’s say, for the sake of argument, that O.J. is in fact guilty of killing his wife (Nicole Brown), and her friend. Can we, now that he’s going to jail “for good”, say that justice has been sufficiently served? If he DID kill his wife and friend back in the 90s, there was clearly a miscarriage of justice when he was found not guilty. But karma came around, right? He’s off to jail now. The victim’s families won their civil suit. Alls well that ends well, right? I’m not so sure.

If cops and lawyer shows on TV have taught me anything, it’s that the system can’t always get the bad guy for the exact crime committed. Instead, those fighting on behalf of us sometimes need to settle for some other or lesser charge. For instance the “little fish” criminal is allowed to plea to a lesser crime in exchange for evidence against the “big fish”; or those Ness types settle on getting those Al Capone types on whatever they can. And there seems to be this perception that that’s okay; that, when such things happen, justice is still served.

But I’m not convinced. And I think the O.J. case is a good counterexample. I think here it's much harder to say that justice hasn't been served, especially with regard to the Brown family. And I don't see how they could get any better deal than what they got now. But just because they can't get anymore out of the system, that doesn't mean they should be satisfied. Don't get me wrong, they have reason to be happy that O.J. is off to jail. But, come on, that wrong he committed against Nicole Brown, her family, her friend, and society at large hasn't been righted.

So how is this different than Al Capone? I think our intuitions about Capone are different: I think here we want to be able to say that justice was served. So how are the 2 cases different? Well, for one thing, O.J.'s murder trial was bungled; whereas they just never tried Capone for the murders and whatnot he did. But surely that's not enough – it doesn't seem to make sense to say that justice was served with Capone despite the fact that they couldn't even get to trial against him (except for tax evasion). Like O.J. the end result is the same: the wrongdoer isn't punished for all the wrongs he did (or, rather, all the wrongs he's known to have done).

So, then, is it just the case that this kind of halfway justice a by-product of our system? Sometimes justice just can't be served fully? That seems to also be something TV has taught me. But that feels wildly unsatisfactory. If this is how it is, why should we be content with system? Because it can't be practically improved? Again, feels wildly unsatisfactory. I could say more, but I think that’s enough for now. This is just my spur-of-the-moment thoughts on the subject. I could be wrong. After all, what do I know.