MICHAEL BROWN, GALILEO, JESUS, AND AMERICAN JUSTICE

MICHAEL BROWN, GALILEO, JESUS, AND AMERICAN INJUSTICE Law is rooted in trial evidence, in theory. Trial evidence is "fact" as defined by the ruling authorities. "In theory," is said, because premise of "evidence as law" is the usual explanation, publicly given. In truth, American law is about the maintenance of those in normative power through the preservation of the historically primal white power paradigm. Pursuant to this primal, white power paradigm, truth is not "fact." Indeed, truth may not be admissible in trial evidence, at all in some cases, simply because it does not conform to evidentiary rules' prescriptions, state or federal, regardless of the merits. These rules are supposed to winnow distillate fact from the dross of ostensibly polluted evidence, which "facts" can then be presented to a petit jury with the judge's permission--presumably bias free--which petit jury will later decide guilt or innocence in accordance with jury instructions stating the law. However as the Hearsay Rule, itself, is a mess, so is much of American law. The hearsay rule is intended, it is claimed, to keep away from the hearing of the jury, biased or impertinent evidence. Hearsay is a statement made out of court that is offered in court to prove as evidence the truth of a matter asserted. http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/hearsay Many an appeal has turned on hearsay, including when a "declarant is unavailable"or http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_804; when available. It has no many exceptions --23 at last count--and exemptions, it can hardly be called a rule! https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_803 Clearly the hearsay rules and the rules of evidence need cleaning up and there are others as well! While this may be true, I digress for Michael Brown's case never got to a trial or petit jury, because it never got past the grand jury. Legal reform, therefore, must encompass much more than the mere washing of the "outside of the cup" to quote Jesus; it must focus on "the inside of the cup," the rules of evidence themselves. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/… The American system of justice is in tatters for all those disfavored folks, disfigured by racism. Yet, it works well for others, neither disfigured nor disfavored by race. To expedite this prevailing racist paradigm the legal system must always appear to be fair, but must never be so, to paraphrase Nicola Machiavelli in THE PRINCE. To pull this legal dissimulation stunt off, what appears must not be so. Otherwise, those disfavored and legally disfigured ones will not be obedient to the law. But will resist its overreach and overreactions, relative to themselves and will deem it to be tyrannical, not just . This development could lead to legal anarchy and to emboldened armed revolutionary zealotry, as the dissed folks, lacking viable alternatives, may inevitably resort to guerrilla warfare against the normative authorities. Joining the these dissenting folks, recent history has shown, may be that sizable minority of favored folks, sympathetic to their cause and to the nation's founding documents. So, given this glum prospect of the future of the American legal system's sinecures of arrogance, injustice and bias, it is likely that reforms will soon be instituted both inside and outside of the cup of American justice, by those with everything to lose, rather than to risk its complete rupture! These thoughts were brought to mind on this one-year anniversary of the martyrdom of Ferguson's Michael Brown, August 9, 2015, by a quote from Galileo Galilei. He was the 17th century Catholic priest/astronomer, who also was vilified and persecuted, for his writing the "truth" about the relationship of the sun and the earth, by the rulers of his church. His defense of the writings of another priest's (Copernicus) caused him to be brought up on charges of heresy. Caught between his love of truth--natural philosophy--and of his own life, he spoke by veiled analogy. Galileo used the analogy of the "movement of the shore, and the stability of the ship," in Copernicus' posthumously published proofs, to demonstrate that the earth revolved around the sun and not the sun around the earth. That the sun circled the earth was erroneously and dogmatically maintained as official church doctrine, for centuries until Copernicus and Galileo, who also invented the telescope. The Catholic Church demanded of its votaries as imposed truth, the belief that earth was the center and the sun was the satellite, based on Aristotle, Ptolemy, the Church Fathers' claims and scriptural misinterpretation. Galileo, to avoid the rigorous sanctions of the church, which ranged from death to torture to excommunication for official any "heresy," he spoke obliquely : "[N]either Copernicus nor his followers will ever use this phenomenon of the shore and the boat to prove that the earth is in motion and the sun at rest. They adduce it only as an example that serves to show, not the truth of their position, but the absence of contradiction between the appearance of a stable earth and a moving sun, to our simple sense experience and the reality to the contrary." (THE ESSENTIAL GALILEO edited and translated by Maurice A. Finocchiaro, 2008, p.166-7) No less deceptive than the stable earth and moving sun of Galileo's illustration, is the appearance of a fair legal system"and the reality of the contrary." Comparability may be found in the non-indictment of Darren Wilson, the police killer of Michael Brown, age 18, and his later, non-prosecution by the federal government as well. It did not make sense; being brazen legal mockery. As a consequence, a world-wide movement was born that boldly proclaimed: BLACK LIVES MATTER. To normative (white) observers, where they stand is "the place that is standing still", while all else moves; but as both iconic astronomers Copernicus, Galileo earlier demonstrated; as Jesus Christ, the Savior of mankind before them remonstrated, and as Michael Brown and friends have in death explicated, about American Justice: what appears to be so, is surely not in fact so! hearsay Definition of hearsay in the Legal Dictionary by The Free Dictionary LEGAL-DICTIONARY.THEFREEDICTIONARY.COM