What is Truth?

A historic rhetorical question asked two thousand years ago is as valid today as it was then. The general public often takes the question of truth for granted since they assume that it is self evident and doesn't require the services of a spin-master. For the public at large, the truth is determined by the addition of all the facts to the exclusion of none. The search for justice begins at the assembly of all the facts whether they are convenient or not. However, there are those whose professional career depend critically upon the perception of the facts they choose to cast

The legal profession among others, pit the success or failure of their legal arguments upon the emphasis of certain facts to the exclusion of others to make their points. Lawyers have taken an oath to uphold the Law to become an officer of the Court. Many lawyers have chosen perception instead of the truth to win their cases. This choice to massage the facts and influence the perception of events finds its extreme in the courtroom. This choice is most evident when certain lawyers make unsubstantiated accusations during civil and criminal proceedings. To illustrate this thinking: If I walk into a room of people who haven't been outside for an hour or so and I tell them it is raining, all the people in the room take it as truth unless someone challenges the statement. There is no questioning of the person's credibility, just acceptance unless this person is known to have made misleading statements in the past. A lawyer will deliberately make false or misleading statements to the Court to advance their case and if the opposing lawyer does not "rebut" or demand substantiation, the Court will accept the falsehood as fact.

This behavior however is not out of line with current accepted legal practice of the Court itself. The Court engages a series of presumptions that follow a similar line of thinking. A presumption must be rebutted by evidence to the contrary. These presumptions in essence turn on it's head the Tradition of English Law that presumes the defendant is innocent until proven guilty. Most of the general public is totally unaware that the Court and it's officers engage in these practices. The pubic naively believes that the Courts are in search of truth to arrive at justice, however, nothing could be further from the truth.

The administration of the law to render legal decisions has supplanted the search for truth to render justice. Under such a legal system, no one with any certainty can be assured they will receive a just and fair trial, never mind an equitable judgment. In fact, I would contend, that those who are found guilty by the current legal system and were actually guilty, were found so only by sheer coincidence. If there is any doubting of the credibility of this statement, please argue your disagreement with the over 140 plus men on death row convicted under the criminal rules of evidence only later to be found innocent via DNA testing. That number is steadily growing. The pain and anguish of their plight is cheapened by challenges from prosecutors throwing up road blocks to post conviction DNA testing to cover up a flawed system.

Post conviction DNA testing is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg, there is still civil law to consider. Under Civil Law, Courts routinely engage in presumptions based on stereotypes to determine guilt or innocence, Family Law is a bitter example of the failure and costs to our society. Society is built upon the contributions of individuals, and every act of injustice rubber stamped by the Courts upon an individual tears the fabric of our society. There are over 2.1 million people in our jails and prisons today, 70% of these people had their lives impacted by the Family Law Courts when they were children. This is the legacy of 50 years using stereotypes to decide child custody decisions. While we can not blame the Family Law judges for being the primary reason a person chooses a life of crime, when they are involved at some point in an individual's life in 70% of the cases it surely must be a causal factor. While we can not directly blame the Family Law judges for not having the clairvoyance to see the impact of their decisions later on in a individual child's life. We can and should hold them accountable for continuing to make the same bad decisions, after all we should be learning from our mistakes. This is the ugly truth of our current legal system, it's failure to acknowledge the inconvenient facts.