Guilty until proven innocent

Gerry Spence offers some much needed balance regarding Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, Prosecutor Patrick Fitgerald, and the presumption of innocence:

Our collective public mind has been molded by the movies and television to accept the notion that the common good permits, indeed, encourages cops and prosecutors to violate the law in order to protect us. We see the police battering down doors of suspects to illegally obtain evidence. We witness the cops bugging phones and forcing confessions. We want the police to win, because they are the heroes of the drama and such crimes are serious and threaten our security. But this sort of lawless bludgeoning of the law does terminal damage to our system of justice. By destroying the rights of any accused none of us are ever safe from the law that once stood to protect us.

Mr. Fitzgerald has selected and then dumped out pages of unsworn, untested, evidence before governor has even been charged. We already know that what the prosecutor provides is only part of the story, only the juiciest excerpts that will cause the governor the most harm. The grand jury has not yet met. Every potential member of the grand jury and later every trial juror who will sit in judgment of the governor has already been stained with prejudice against him. The presumption of innocence has been reduced to a cruel joke. Why have a trial? Mr. Fitzgerald has already convicted the governor in the media. One wonders if the government’s case is so legally flimsy that the prosecutor must revert to these tactics in order to assure a conviction.

. . . What we witness without a whimper from the media, the courts, or the bar is a prosecutor charged with the highest professional duty to see that every accused, no matter how guilty, obtains a fair trial, and who, instead, in this historical instant, has voluntarily taken steps to see that such a right becomes little more than a sad, distant echo of a justice system that once set the standard for the world.