Term 3 Independent Post 3

                       A fair deal in Court

                A fair deal in court, can it be achieved? No. Why? We have to look into how the court operates.

                Usually, there is a jury, unlike special case, which decides if the prosecuted is guilty or not. This jury is made up of a group of people “randomly chosen”. Everyone is prejudiced; it’s just a matter of whether he or she shows it to the world. This prejudice can make a lot of difference in a court case. An example would be the court case in “To Kill a Mocking Bird”. This book is about discrimination. Tom Robinson is a black and was accused of raping a white woman. The town, in which the story resides in, Maycomb, is prejudiced against blacks. The people feel that all blacks are criminals. The jury, even without looking at the evidence, has a preconceived notion that Tom was a rapist and he is guilty. Later on, despite all evidence pointing otherwise, the jury still found that Tom was guilty. The judge, who decides the sentence, has no say in whether he is guilty or not, although he knew that Tom did not rape the woman. In the above example, the jury is prejudiced against Tom, and the outcome of the court case was inaccurate.

                In order for something to be “fair”, perspective is very important. Take the Osama assassination for example. Should he be given a fair court trial? Or should he have been assassinated immediately like what has been done? If you choose to assassinate him there and then, the world would be a safer place to be in. This would be a fair thing to do if you look from the perspective of the rest of the world. However, if you look at things from Al Qaeda’s perspective, it is unfair as Osama did not stand a chance, not even given the opportunity to go to court to stand for a trial. For something to be fair, it’s all about what perspective you look at the issue from. When something is fair from one point of view, it is unfair from the other. Things can almost never be fair in a court, as there is at least 2 very contrasting points of view. You can never have the best of both worlds. Nothing is perfect, just like a court case.