" 'Not Guilty' doesn't mean innocent."
What a mess this Casey Anthony deal is. Obviously a very screwed up family, a messy prosecution, a biased media, an emotional train wreck. Who knows the truth? I sure don't. But I do know that there is an important concept in the American legal system that should be discussed.
In many other countries, the legal or justice system - whatever the process is called that decides guilt and punishment - is little more than a tool used by the government to manipulate and control people into behaving a certain way. In America, and many other countries, the process is designed to arrive at truth and fairly implement justice.
The means to that end is our judicial system. It includes attorneys, judges, jurors, etc. There is a whole legal paradigm that is specifically and intentionally designed to serve a higher concept called Justice. If he judicial system (the means) loses sight of Justice (the end), the system becomes and end in and of itself. In other words, it becomes irrelevant. (The interview I heard with one of the jurors sounded just like this paragraph. She openly said they didn't do what is right, they did what is legal.)
Without the end (Justice) there is no point to the means (the legal system). It's no more important conceptually than a game of chess played by bored college students, even though a broken and corrupt legal system can negatively impact the lives of thousands.
I'm wondering, as trials like the Casey Anthony trial and the infamous O.J. trial and a zillion others seem to indicate, whether our evolving legal system has forgotten its purpose, and therefore serves none. Attorneys seem more and more to be out to win their case, prevail in the competition at any and all cost and make a name for themselves. Justice is relegated to philosophical idealism, and has no role to play in the day to day goings on of our system.
I'm pretty convinced that our political system is already destroyed by a similar scenario. Good government is unrelated to the process of winning elections to the point that nobody - neither the candidates or the voters - think in terms of quality of government when Election Day comes.
In a way, this is all sad. In another way, it just represents the aging process of a democracy. Historically, the life expectancy of a democracy is less than 250 years. The US is approaching that age now. America seems to be following the life cycle pretty closely. At first an oppressed people become a free people. Free people become successful people. Successful people become complacent people. Complacent people become oppressed people. And the cycle starts all over.
We need to demand quality government from our politicians. We need to expect justice from our legal system. We need and deserve competence from our economic system - and the people who regulate and manipulate it. This is what government 'for the people, by the people' is all about and hinges on.
Sometimes there just seems to be overwhelming evidence that we are failing. We really need to remember how to do this government thing right. Our future, our childrens' future depends on it. Or we can just get lost watching American Idol on TV and let the thing self destruct.