This came after I shut my laptop because of low battery power:
Judge Hoyt: Aren’t there rules about preservation of documents at the state level?
Chuck Rosenthal: Yes.
Hoyt: In fact it can be a crime. It’s called obstruction of justice at the federal level. What do you call it at the state level?
Rosenthal: Tampering with evidence.
Hoyt: And you've prosecuted people for that. Your office has prosecuted people for that.
Rosenthal: Yes.
The line between ordinary citizen and felony indictee is grey and exceedingly fine. None of us -- no matter how law-abiding -- are more than one Very Bad Day from being charged with a felony. Chuck would probably have done well during his career in the DA's office to remember this, and to treat every person whose life or future was in his hands with the compassion and fairness that he would want if he were in their shoes.
For the universe is implacable in its settling of scores, and today may well have been Chuck's Very Bad Day.
2 comments:
When you see the humiliation that people go through when being charged with a crime, you only want the most heinous of criminals to suffer that fate.
I don't know that Chuck rises to that level.
If it is possible for a person to get whacked in the head and be "no longer Gage", how can we know, without first understanding everything that created his personality, whether a person deserves to be charged with a crime or not. We can't. You don't know, I don't know, and Chuck doesn't know. That is one of my guiding principles.
But unless you are a nihilist you believe that the universe corrects its own imbalances. If Chuck goes around charging people with crimes without knowing every aspect of their nature and nurture that lead them to do what they do (knowledge that is beyond us mere mortals) it shouldn't surprise anyone when he winds up on the receiving end of such "justice".
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