THE PARADOX OF JUSTIFIED INJUSTICE

Alex Huang

Bam - the sound of conviction, or freedom. In the chaotic toils of modern society, hardly anything is just. Whether it be the oppression of minorities, workers, corruption; the world was not meant to be fair. Few institutions pursue the idealistic values of equality unironically and honestly, and those who do, fail short in reaching these utopian goals. Court: where people were deemed to be born equal, where justice was to be served, where the virtues of humanity were made to manifest literally into an unideal world. Even so, no matter how thick the walls of an institution’s moral conduct, any human establishment will inevitably face corruption and prejudice. Ironically, morality and justice, though they appear at first glance to be born identical, are gated apart by long and vast rivers, destined to run parallel throughout society.

Most if not all human industries, out of greed and self-interest have found themselves trapped in a cycle of backlash and degradation; the judicial system included. The plea system, which was originally designed to promote fairness and shorten the length of courts indeed increases efficiency, but at what cost? Defendants are usually asked to plead ‘guilty’ for possibly a lighter sentence or ‘not guilty’ for a chance to prove themselves as the name suggests, not guilty. However, as the saying goes, efficiency does not equal quality. By providing the possibility for shorter trials, not only has the system facilitated rushed judgements, but also prompted abusive and unjust trials. Breakpoints for self-interests have given corruption and injustice more room to grow into a severe issue of court. Over time, prosecutors found with enough pressure and guilt-tripping, nearly any defendant could be compelled to confess, sparing the government the inconvenience, expenses, and a potential public jury trial. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 27 % of people accused of homicide gave false confessions and 80% of all criminals confessed (1). How fair, truly, is this system, if lives were only weighed by the monetary gains and time of others? Additionally, “interrogators can legally lie to suspects to coerce a confession,” a fact undisclosed to most, with “only a minority of…43% (4).” Lying, as a legal process of court, is not only immoral, but also is ironically systematically allowing injustice to run rampant within courts. While there is truth in confessions prompted by immodest information provided by persecutors to some extent, undeniably, a statement regarding the truth built off lies lacks truth or reason in itself.

The idea of employing jurors and judges has been made with clearly righteous intent, but the nature of it exposes the justice system, once again, to further injustice. Jurors and judges are usually complete strangers of the defendant, in order to remove bias from their decisions. While they were successful in such endeavors, another problem arises: indifference. ‘Sensitivity’ is used to describe whether a juror is able to understand and distinguish the quality of a piece of evidence, as “a lack of sensitivity could lead jurors to unquestionably accept poor quality evidence as proof of a defendant’s guilt” (4). A lack of connection between the juror and the defendant results in a lack of reason to care for a complete stranger. Disconnection and indifference is unpreventable, especially under stress and tiresome environment, but its resulting unjust convictions and unpredictable injustice give rise to questions in evaluating whether the current judicial system is an ethical institution. In the renowned drama 12 Angry Men, one such quote goes as follows: “You have sat here and voted guilty with everyone else because there are some baseball tickets burning a hole in your pocket.” To grant the power to decide the fate and mortality of a stranger; is a right which nobody should have over anyone else, is an injustice within itself, but too a necessary means for justice to be enforced. The paradox of morality and the justice system warrants its importance, but more so illustrates the indifference to this right and power as immoral.

Often expressed in many different literary works as well, personal prejudice is even more critical because of its prevalence and influence upon the judgment of jurors and judges. Studies from the National Registry of Exonerations show that black defendants are 7 times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder and serve 3 more years on average in prison than white men (2). The maintenance of justice within a courtroom is to try to remove more human and subjective perspectives, instead opting for more objective views. Even so, in the end it all comes down to the judge or jurors’ own conscience and perspective. It would simply be too idealistic to remove all prejudice from court.

While laws are meant to be fair, given they are unchanging codes for reference, judgment comes down to a personal perspective, rather than the objective views intended by the system. Jurors, judges, prosecutors are alive; are bound to bias, but the system is not. The system is a solid code and the basic foundations of the system for which the aforementioned reference to come to their conclusions. As established previously, a flawed system gives more room for manifestation of humanrelated injustice. Long have many called for change within the laws of the courtroom to provide an objective lens for which cases may be examined, even though paradoxically, people are subjective. The conflicting state of the objectivity limbo between morality, objectivity, and justice has created a difficult system to provide solutions for. For example, one solution proposed was adopting “lengthy single terms” for judges so they can make their decision without having to worry about losing their job (3). Yet lengthy terms allow more carelessness and corruption as well, reinforcing the issues it was meant to solve. Most solutions have created drawbacks which often worsen the situation; because the paradox of perspective and law are contradictory.

Morality is based upon human perceptions, as Einstein used to say “Common sense is the collection of acquired prejudices up to age 18.” If these prejudiced perceptions are what lead to inequality, it would be a paradox within itself to pursue morality’s compatibility with equality within our institutions when both derive from human perceptions. Life, derived from mutations, mutates its surroundings too. In any human-related institute, are politics and morality never compatible as far-fetched utopian principles? When, if ever, will this river find its end, in its peace, where our idealistic values may meet?