Justice For All

As you’ve most certainly heard by now, the DOJ announced last week that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) will be tried in federal criminal court rather than a military tribunal. The specific court that will be the venue for KSM’s prosecution is located in lower manhattan, just a few blocks from the site of the terrorist attacks KSM is accused of masterminding.

I, for one, think this is a good thing. First of all, the attacks were 8 years ago now and it is about time that justice is served. Secondly, I think that a prosecution in a U.S. criminal court is, in fact, serving justice. How many times in the last 8 years have we heard the word “justice” thrown around, particularly by our government leaders, as what we stand for, the reason we are at war, the reason we will not tolerate x, y or z, the reason liberals/conservatives are wrong on issues a, b, or c. It’s all about justice for those who lost their lives that day. Justice for all, as we like to say.

As a lawyer, I have had occasion to think about the pros and cons of our justice system many times, personally and professionally. Perhaps blinded by the tens of thousands of dollars I invested in obtaining a law degree and license to practice law,  I actually believe we have a damn good justice system. Yes, sometimes it fails. But the core of our system is the American citizen – the juror, the judge – and humans are not perfect. And a system that does not rely upon human beings would be one without sympathy and reasoned thought and would be imperfect as well. Our system strives to do what any good justice system should do:  it provides an opportunity for an accused to face his accusers and the evidence against him without a pre-determined outcome.

We trust our justice system every day to determine whether a presumably innocent person has violated the law such that he should be permanently deprived of his civil rights, freedom and even his life.What has some people upset about the civilian trial of KSM, from what I can tell, is that there is NOT a pre-determined outcome. It seems people are only willing to allow “justice” in this case if it’s no justice at all.

Look, I hate the terrorists as much as anybody else. I am a New Yorker. I ran from the crumbling towers that day. I felt the pain of the victims and their families. I want the people responsible to pay for their crimes. BIG TIME. I want it to hurt, slowly and for a long time. But I do not want our country to spiral into one that throws justice to the wayside when there is an iota of a chance that it will not turn out the way we want; when it might show that what we thought to be true, was not so. That kind of blind confidence in the “truth” and what is “right”  — to hell with justice — is what led to the Salem witch trials, Japanese-American internment camps and McCarthyism. Those are shameful times in American history and that is not an America we should beckon back. If we are willing to sacrifice justice, which has long been heralded as a core value of American society, why fight terrorism at all? They will have already won “death to America.”

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