She's wearing the blindfold on her ankle

The older I have become the more I feel this creeping sense the American way of justice is fundamentally unjust.

It is not because I am some kind of bleeding heart liberal I feel this way. Rather it is my horrible habit of going through life listening with my eyes open. I have been amazed how many folks move through life not listening and not seeing and sadly not thinking. Thinking has become a dying art that was at the best of times not well practiced or often practiced. Sadly in academia thinking has been frowned upon especially if the thinker came up with the wrong conclusions.

Why would I think our current system of justice is unjust? Well, the reasons are myriad.

I have never served on a jury. However, I have sat in the room to be picked for a jury more times than I care to remember. I knew my journey to the courthouse was always a waste of time because I inhabited one of those professions that lawyers labeled as "never, not even if they are the last living soul available." I have long known that lawyers preferred not to put pastors on the jury because the prosecution likes them for conviction, but the defense likes them for punishment and neither is comfortable with the prospects they might be unpredictable. So, I would mutteringly answer my jury summons knowing full well I was wasting time. Either a settlement would be reached and we would all go home, or I would be canceled out early because I had too many negatives.

So, I have a profound question about the meaning of "a jury of one's peers." The legal profession has turned that phrase on its ear. Juries are not composed of a collection of one's peers unless the whole country turns out to be biased in ways the attorneys want and naive and basically brain dead. If they aren't, testimony will take them there as trials are more theater than the theater.

I also know that justice is all about the right attorney at the right price. The more you pay, the more they play. So slimy corporations and morally substandard insurance companies pay well and their attorneys play well and hard.

I have also been introduced to the world of the incarcerated.

I am not naive enough to believe the rich never commit crimes, but it amazes me how few rich people are in prison. In fact the only ones I have met aren't but insist they are and by the way, CNN is out in front of the prison doing stories on them every week.

In these days of our ever worsening economy, I know that if anyone were to go to prison, it will most likely be some poor soul who did what he was told and changed some people's mortgage documents to misrepresent their income or the rate of interest they would pay. The boss who schooled them on those techniques will never see the inside of a cell.

Little people serve time, big people pay lawyers. Such is the tragic American way of justice.

Justice is not blind, she is badly broken. Tragically for all, the break has been set by the blindfold that should have been around her eyes.