Recently I watched a documentary
about a man who had murdered his female co- worker. He did it because she was
promoted over him. Even though the police felt he did it, the first chance to
get him indicted failed because the validity of the search warrant did not
cover the basement of the house which excluded vital evidence in the case; this
and DNA evidence then not being what it is today did not help either. His
defense lawyer, commenting about that first attempt, smugly declared that he
had always loved the challenge while happily boasting that “We had won”.
The second time around several years
later, on a re-trial, the accused man was convicted of second - degree murder. His
lawyer lost that the re-match, for that is what it always was and ever is: a game.
When I saw this pantomime play out on
the TV screen, I could only think of Barry Scheck of the OJ Simpson trial. I
believe it was only after that infamous trial that he started to find his
conscience and become again what a lawyer is meant to be before it became a
game and before all ethics, truth and facts went out the window, and is also
when he found that 1 can be the loneliest number.
Since the trial, it is a paradox that Scheck is using the
science of DNA now to get those wrongly convicted out of jail, after making
sure that OJ, who should have been in jail because of it, got out too.
He threads the boards of shame in fine sackcloth cut from
the finest tailors to wash and cleanse his guilt so that he will be remembered
for all the good that he did. Yet, it is the stain of what that was, a stain so
great where he laughed at all of us, that it will be the only thing to stay in
the publics mind and the rest of his actions will be forgotten and interred
with his bones.
Barry Clifford
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