When Justice Comes Jury-Rigged

On Monday June 3, The Australian printed eleven letters on Donald Trump’s trial, all  stemming from an editorial and article by Greg Sheridan in the weekend edition. Sheridan’s article accurately described the trial as being part of a politically motivated witch-hunt; a monstrous attack on US democracy. Eleven out of the eleven letters, presumably all of the letters fit to print, took a contrary view. The letters came from places across all of the mainland states.

Simon Gamble (Qld) bemoans the possibility of America being led by “a convicted criminal.” Peter Tesch (NSW) refers to the jury as “12 impartial citizens, who quickly delivered a unanimous verdict. Trust in the US justice system has been upheld.” Martin Walton (Qld) notes that “Donald Trump has shown no contrition since his conviction.” David Salter (NSW) finds the verdict “a practical expression of US democratic principles, not an attack on them.” Kevin Burke (Vic) describes Trump as “a narcissistic convicted criminal.” Mark Tomkinson (WA) asserts that Trump’s conviction wasn’t a dark day for America but “akin to the end of a second Dark Age.” Susan McLochlan (Qld) asserts that Trump was “found guilty of paying ‘hush’ money” (he wasn’t; that’s not a crime) and contemplates the Statue of Liberty being embarrassed that he could still run for president from a prison cell while puffing on Cuban cigars (Trump neither smokes nor drinks). Suzanne Germain (Qld) chides Sheridan for failing to mention “the tens of millions of Americans who would lose trust in the American judicial system if Trump were not held to account for his dishonesty.” Nick Palethorpe (NSW) draws a parallel between Cohen and Trump as convicted fraudsters. Brian Tierman (SA) captions the US election as “the decrepit versus the deceitful.” And finally, Tony Brownlee wonders whether Stormy Daniels will need to repay the money to Trump as it “must now be deemed the proceeds of crimes.”

In the same newspaper on June 4, Troy Bramston, well known sufferer of Trump Derangement Syndrome, points to the latest Lowy Institute poll showing that 68 percent of Australians would vote for Biden and only 29 percent for Trump. He complements Australians for having the “infinite wisdom [to] know Trump will be bad for the US and Australia.” I am surprised, in view of unanimity among the aforementioned letter writers, that the figure for Biden isn’t 98 percent rather than a mere 68 percent. After all, I doubt those who read the Age or the SMH or the Guardian would be better disposed towards Trump than Murdoch readers.

It is depressing, is it not, that 70 per cent (to round it) of people we pass in the street or meet in churches or in pubs and clubs would vote for Biden over Trump. Wars are raging under his watch, millions upon millions of people of mixed nationalities and unchecked backgrounds have been allowed to cross the southern border, energy independence has been lost, the justice system has been weaponised – yes, that is patently true, despite the sheer head-in-the-sand ignorance displayed by the letter writers. It is a case of see no evil if it is being done to Donald Trump and, by easy extension, to anyone on the “wrong side” of the political fence. Among others, Peter Navarro is in jail and Steve Bannon will shortly join him.

And it is all above board, apparently. Or so the blinkered think. After all, Trump had his day in a duly constituted court, didn’t he? Well, so did Alexei Navalny (Russia), Aung San Suu Kyi (Myanmar), Anwar Ibrahim (Malasia), Imran Khan (Pakistan), Otto Frederick Warmbier (North Korea), George Pell (Victoria), among other victims of politicised courts. Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime; the old-fashioned communist standard, repurposed in New York, especially for Trump.

Equality under the law is not a nice to have. It is an essential component of our peerless Judeo-Christian civilisation. When the rule of law is gone, truth, trust and peace of mind are replaced with lies, suspicion and trepidation. Sheridan despises Trump, he’s made that clear enough many times, but he recognises the enormity of the injustice at work and how it strikes at our fundamental values.

Written constitutions and common law are meaningless unless the character of a country’s people is overwhelmingly decent and fair-minded. Beyond reasonable doubt is a Christian bulwark against convicting innocent people. When you can find not one among twelve people who are prepared to uphold that standard of proof, whatever their political leanings, you know that something is rotten in the state of New York.

When you can’t find a letter-writer to the Australian able to put aside their disdain for Trump and think more broadly and objectively, you know that something is rotten somewhere in this nation. In that light, it is less surprising that an innocent Cardinal Pell being convicted of a crime he could not have feasibly carried out. There were a number of parts to that particular gross miscarriage of justice.

Many in the media were complicit, as Keith Windschuttle (The Persecution of George Pell; order your copy here) and Gerard Henderson (Cardinal Pell, The Media Pile-On) amply demonstrate. Inside the justice system, bungling cops out to get their man at whatever cost to fair play started the charade. Prosecutors played along. Appeal court judges implausibly added the coup de grâce by seemingly translating “not impossible” as ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. However, be not alarmed, “twelve good men and true” stand between them and you. Or do they?

When all is said and done, freedom from oppression, from unjust incarceration, comes down to the character of those on juries. Clearly, this was wanting in Pell’s trial, as it was  in Trump’s. At question. Is it wanting in the populations from which the juries were drawn? Are the letter writers representative? If common sense and common decency, forged in our Christian culture, have ebbed away in society at large, then we all better watch out. J’accuse…à la guillotine!