2
1
Her court appointed lawyer has told her she is going to lose
at trial and to prepare to go to prison in time for Christmas. The county will not pay for an investigator to locate exculpatory eyewitnessess or for experts to testify. The county has been given unlimited resources to prosecute and is spending tens of thousands of scarce taxpayer dollars to convict someone who is no threat to society.
My daughter is black and the house she was visiting was a rental. She found out the hard way that in this California city it isn't what you do that matters. It is who you are and how much money you have.
In the second case the name of the white woman shooter was withheld from the public. The local DA, who is now the last word on what the law is and who is a criminal, declared the shooting justifiable self-defense and the woman walked away free. She has gone about her life with no consequences.
Cases like this demonstrate why we as citizens cannot give absolute power over to the criminal justice system by allowing inflexible blanket laws, mandatory sentencing and capital punishment. We risk becoming a police state. Remember the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller regarding the indifference of German intellectuals to the rise of Hitler:
"First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."
1 | 2
