Success, not Justice

In an interview with Tavis Smiley, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter made a remark that hit me like a ton of bricks.
Carter, who was tried and convicted twice for a triple murder, was imprisoned for 19 years. He and his apparent accomplice were both sentenced to three consecutive life sentences. Carter to this day thinks it is miraculous that they were not given the death penalty, but he attributes the sentence they did receive to perhaps serious doubt on the part of the presiding judge as to their guilt.
What struck me during Carter’s interview with Smiley, however, was not his story; I had heard it and read about it before, and Denzel Washington starred in a movie about Carter’s life. What struck me was Carter’s summation of the justice system.
“The justice system is not about justice,” he said. “The justice system is about success.”
He went on to explain that police departments, prosecutors and judges have much at stake in criminal cases. The more the system convicts of wrongdoing, the more it looks like police, prosecutors and judges are doing their jobs. “A good prosecutor, with lots of convictions under his belt, can and does look to becoming a judge, and ‘good, successful’ judges might get to the governor’s mansion.
Meanwhile, many innocents sit in prisons, on death row or in the general prison populace.
“Nobody listens to you when you are innocent,” he said. “There are a lot of people in prison who are innocent and who are trying to get someone to listen, but that doesn’t happen very often,” Carter said.
His statements moved me, because for the longest time, I have marveled at how, when newly discovered evidence becomes available that will prove that someone was wrongly convicted, prosecutors seem unwilling to even consider that evidence. I watch a lot of “Dateline ID” and I have been disturbed for some time at what appears to be closed minds on the parts of prosecutors.
In fact, I have been long disturbed about the lack of justice for the poor and disenfranchised. I am still reeling at the case of the Scott Sisters, recently released, for a robbery which they not only steadfastly maintained they had no part in, and a robbery which involved no violence and netted only $11.
The Scott Sisters were convicted of two consecutive life terms, and even though Gov. Haley Barbour arranged for their release “for medical reasons,” even he, these many years later, refuses to say he believes the justice system was wrong in their case.
It seems that we the church ought to do all we can to provide programs and services for our young people so that they never get wrapped up in our unjust justice system. If it is a fact, as Carter says, that the justice system “is not concerned about justice; it’s concerned with success,” then we ought to do all we can to keep our children and youth away from that system. It is not meant to provide rehabilitation; it is set up to support the “success” of police and prosecutors. We in this nation spend so much more to imprison people than we do to educate them. The prisons, therefore, have a steady supply of people to entrap and keep their profits coming. Profit, after all, is the supreme indication of “success” in this world.
There is not a one of us who can close our eyes and pretend that there is nothing wrong with the justice system, or who can say that prisons only have “the bad people” in them.
That would be a nugatory, as my daughter would say.
Ask Rubin Carter.
Have a good week.
Pastor Smith