Bryan Fischer is a Dolt (American Justice System edition)

It’s been a while since I pointed out how Bryan Fischer is a dolt.  I think I need to correct that.

(Fischer is Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association, host of the talk radio program Focal Point on American Family Radio, and posting on the AFA-run blog Rightly Concerned — but the AFA for some reason has a disclaimer at the bottom of all his posts that he doesn’t really speak for them.)

The American judicial system is something of an anomaly for many on the Right.  On the one hand, you have The Horrible Example of Liberal Judges Passing Their Own Laws and Letting Evil People Go.  On the other hand, It’s Part of the American Government and What Makes Us Exceptional (Except When the Liberals Get Involved) So Yay Team!

Fischer, though, has come up with less common criticism of the judicial system — which I interpret as Change of Venue … Tool of the Devil!

Federal officials are planning to move the murder trial of Jared Loughner from Tucson to California. This is a terrible, terrible idea, and contrary to biblical concepts of justice.

Innocent blood was shed in Tucson, and the public servants of Tucson should be entrusted with the responsibility and authority to execute justice on behalf of the victims and their families.

With an emphasis on “execute.”

The point of change of venue is that it’s difficult for people in a given community to render a fair and impartial judgment of the evidence presented at trial when all they’ve read in the papers and heard on the TV and perhaps even had friends or acquaintances tell them is “THAT GUY THEY ACCUSED IS GUILTY OF A HORRIBLE CRIME! HE DID IT! CRUCIFY! CRUCIFY!”

It is a perversion of justice to deprive this community of the ability to deal with the monstrous act of evil.

Remarkably enough, the justice system is not meant primarily to give a community a sense of closure and satisfaction that The Bad Guy Got His in the End.

In fact, it is designed to try to establish facts, and render judgment based on same, in order to (a) punish the guilty and (b) protect the community from further harm.  Pursuing vengeance is not on the docket (and it’s amusing that the Right so often ignores that desire while criticizing the Left for pursuing “Feel Good” philosophies).

The murders of six innocent people by the Marxist-loving, Hitler-loving, Bible-hating, atheistic pothead radical leftwinger Loughner …

Okay, we’ll assume Bryan, you mean “Marx-loving.”

The whole “who Loughner ‘loved’ as an author” meme was based on, of all things, the dude’s Facebook page.  The problem is, citing Marx and Hitler tells only part of the story. Loughner’s full reading list included not just Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto, but …

• Animal Farm
• Brave New World
• The Wizard Of OZ
• Aesop Fables
• The Odyssey
• Alice Adventures Into Wonderland
• Fahrenheit 451
• Peter Pan
• To Kill A Mockingbird
• We The Living (by Ayn Rand)
• The Phantom Toll Booth
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
• Pulp
• Through The Looking Glass
• Siddhartha
• The Old Man And The Sea
• Gulliver’s Travels
• The Republic
• Meno

If there’s a coherent literary or philosophical theory there, to label him right-wing or left-wing, I’d love to hear it.  (And that assumes that he was actually being honest in his FB profile.)

That Loughner was an intermittent pot-head seems established. Declaring a pattern to his beliefs from his reading list implies a more coherent pattern of psyche than he seemed to possess.

… is traumatic enough on a city. Now to be deprived of the authority to see for themselves that justice is done is a second injustice.

This is, of course, silly.  This particular case is for the federal crimes committed, in terms of the attack on a US Congressman, her aide, and US Federal Judge.  The state of Arizona and the city of Tucson are free to pursue their own criminal charges.

In the ancient civil code of Israel, the community in which the murder had been committed had the responsibility to carry out justice.

That was generally true of most Iron Age civilizations, Bryan.  They didn’t have TV and airplanes and cars and federal laws and Constitutions to make changes of venue both practical and procedurally possible.

The standards of evidence were very high – no one could be sentenced to death without the testimony of two or three eyewitnesses – but when the standard had been met, execution followed.

It’s worth nothing, by the way, that if biblical standards of evidence were still followed in America’s judicial system, as they once were, you would have only an infinitesimal chance of sending an innocent man to death row. Too many are sentenced to die or to long prison terms today based on the testimony of a single witness. That’s exactly how you get innocent people sent away for life. Once again, the Bible is the solution, not the problem.

The whole 2-3 people prove a case thing in the Bible is open to some interpretation, and arguably just means that two or three people were necessary to even bring a case. And, of course, that excludes the whole concept of forensic evidence as to crimes.

I actually agree, Bryan, that a single witness is too often the lynchpin for a major conviction.  That said, I’m sure, Bryan, you’re aware that two witnesses were what allowed the Sanhedrin to convict Jesus of blasphemy.

The only exception was that when a man killed another man unintentionally – the death was accidental – he could flee for safety to a city of refuge until his trial was held. (It’s worthy of note that there was no system of incarceration in ancient Israel. A crime against property was taken care of through restitution plus a substantial penalty. A crime against life was taken care of through execution. Think of the money we could save if we returned to something approximating this simple but elegant system of justice.)

Yes, of course. And if the person couldn’t pay the fines, well, slavery was an adequate proxy.  And if we executed everyone who killed, quickly, without appeals or a chance to argue that the justice system had been in some way flawed, we’d sure save a lot of money.  Just what Jesus would do!

But if the “congregation” (read “jury of his peers”) found him guilty, then the “elders of his city shall send and take him from there (the city of refuge) and hand him over to the avenger of blood, so that he may die (Deuteronomy 19:12).”

Actually, that passage doesn’t argue any sort of jury or jurisprudence.  “But if out of hate someone lies in wait, assaults and kills a neighbor, and then flees to one of these cities, the killer shall be sent for by the town elders, be brought back from the city, and be handed over to the avenger of blood to die.”

Supporters of changing venue argue that pretrial publicity may make an impartial jury impossible. This is ridiculous, and an insult to ordinary Americans, who take their solemn oath to base their verdict exclusively on evidence presented in court with extreme seriousness. The people of Tucson are capable of following the evidence wherever it leads and rendering a just verdict, and it’s an affront to them to think otherwise.

Oh, puhlease.

I consider myself a fairly moral and rational (and even Christian) person.  If someone was accused of killing my wife, and the papers had been trumpeting that it was so (and, of course, if the papers, or the Internet, says it’s so, it must be true), I would recuse myself for fear that my emotions and desire for vengeance would have me leaping at the opportunity to have someone who “everyone knows” is guilty pay bloodily for their crime.

When a local jury in a local court renders a just verdict, …

When, or if?

… the community has the opportunity of experiencing the satisfaction of knowing that the community itself, which has the most intense level of motivation to see that justice is done, has dealt with a terrible crime committed in its midst.

Actually, the community itself has the most intense level of wanting to see someone punished, and is too often more than happy to go with whomever is pointed at first.

Tucson now will be robbed of that opportunity, …

Unless they file city charges against Loughner, which they can do.

… and a verdict will be handed down in another state by people who do not have the same intense desire this community has to see that the innocent blood of their loved ones, friends, and family members is avenged.

Wow, Bryan — you’re quick to point out the affront to the fair people of Tucson that they might not render a fair verdict, but somehow don’t see the insult to the fair people of San Diego that they would not have an intense desire to see justice done.

Oh, but wait — what’s important here is “the intense desire to see that the innocent blood is avenged.” Which vengeance may not have anything to do with justice or truth.

(“Vengeance,” by the way, is just a synonym for justice. You could look it up. See the dictionary: “vengeance: punishment inflicted or retribution exacted for an injury or wrong.”)

Bryan, that you see vengeance and retribution as synonyms for justice speaks volumes.

Federal officials are prosecuting only the murders of Rep. Giffords’ congressional aide and the murder of Judge John Roll. This means no formal charges have yet been filed in the deaths of the four “civilians” (as the Associated Press inartfully put it) whose lives were also tragically taken.

Which is not the fault of the federal prosecutors (who don’t have a legal federal crime to prosecute for the other), nor does it have anything to do with the change of venue for their charges.  The state and city certainly can file whatever charges they choose.

(I do agree, by the way, that it seems odd in such cases to base murder charges on some deaths and not on others.  The argument would be, though, that a murderous attack on a government official is not so much different because one human life is more important than another, but because it represents an attack on society and democracy, in the person of its government.  It’s certainly something that’s worth some discussion.)

Let’s hope the trials for these murders takes place in Tucson, that the perpetrator is swiftly sentenced to death, …

That the right perpetrator is determined, and that the judgment is both just and merciful.

… and that the sentence is carried out without delay.

Which supposes that the somehow flawed American justice system that would commit such an injustice as changing venue to San Diego is otherwise beyond reproach and perfect and incapable of procedural error or prosecutorial misconduct, such that an innocent person (or a person responsible for their actions) is not judged unjustly.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. would say, borrowing the words of the ancient prophet Amos, “Let justice roll down (in Tucson) like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24).

With all due respect to Dr King and the prophet Amos, I suspect that Jesus Himself would have something to say about mercy, about care for prisoners, and about what happens when popular opinion takes the place of impartial justice.

Human vengeance is not, in fact, justice.  Allowing the passions of the crowd to influence judgment of truth (especially when death is on the line) is not justice. That’s not something that supports the American Family.  And Bryan Fischer is a dolt for arguing that.