Of all the loud voices of protests from across the country about the unfairness of the legal system toward the former president, I have not heard a single one of them declare he is innocent.
Thus, I am led to wonder what the issue really is for them. It seems these protesters have a problem with accountability. It does not matter whether or not he has been treated in a fair and just manner, it appears their desire is for him to be above the law.
Catherine Meeks
Well, that is very interesting because many of these same loud voices would not be willing to make such an argument for the average person in this country and certainly not for a poor white person or a person of color.
Where were these voices when young brown and Black folks were being killed in extrajudicial police killings? Did the fact of the lack of legal due process concern them? If it did, they were quiet about it.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, in 2014, at least 4% of the folks sentenced to Death Row have been found to be innocent. One of the major arguments for the abolition of the death penalty has to do with this very issue. What about the innocent folks who have been executed? It is a grave matter about which all of us need to be paying attention.
We continue to this present moment to have 4% to 6% of the folks being sentenced to prison who later are found to be innocent. This is a reason for the birth of the Innocence Project.
Many will remember the Central Park Five, who were accused of rape and murder and sent to prison for a crime they did not commit. Attorney Bryan Stevenson has tirelessly worked over the years to save both the innocent and guilty from execution. By the way, one of the people who called for the death penalty against the Central Park Five was none other than Donald Trump, who has refused to apologize even after they were exonerated.
If there is only one innocent person on Death Row, it is one too many. As a civilized nation of people, we have to be concerned about having a legal system that is impartial and continues to assert that no one is above the law.
What seems to be true at this moment is that the rich and powerful, who have enjoyed being able to circumvent legal accountability most of the time, lost that battle this time with Trump’s convictions. I am not happy to see a former president of my country convicted of any crime. But the issue is not the legal system, it is the behavior. Behavior has consequences. This is one of those universal principals that all of us learn before we get to kindergarten, and it is continuously reinforced as we travel along our life’s path.
“The rich and powerful, who have enjoyed being able to circumvent legal accountability most of the time, lost that battle this time with Trump’s convictions.”
This is a moment for all of us who care about having a civil society to stand up to be counted. When someone is being mistreated or unfairly characterized in any manner, whether by the judicial system or someone simply choosing to lie about them, we need to stand against that behavior. There cannot be any exceptions made in this regard.
I am not sure if William Cullen Bryant’s comment, “Truth crushed to the earth will rise again,” is true or not, but I hope it is. I hope we will all decide to take a chance on the truth and tell it every time we can instead of opting to lie. I hope we will stay open to a new dispensation of courage and the integrity it takes to live in the brave space of truth-telling.
This is no time to hunt for a hiding spot. It is time to meet the lies and efforts to destroy the rule of law and other guard rails that help us to exist in this country in spite of our differences and our problems.
All of us know we have much work to do to make sure everyone living in this land is seen as a beloved child of the Creator and is treated in that manner. We know greed, violence and many other challenges confront us. And hopefully, we will persevere.
We have come this far, perhaps by faith and a few other things that are less noble than faith, but we are here. We need to seek the way forward with a new determination to make this truly the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”
Catherine Meeks lives in Riverdale, Ga., where she serves as executive director of Absalom Jones Episcopal Center for Racial Healing. She was awarded the President Joseph R. Biden Lifetime Achievement and Service Award in August 2022 and was listed by Georgia Trend magazine as one of the 500 women to watch in Georgia in 2022. She taught African American Studies at Mercer University for 25 years. She is the author of a new book, The Night Is Long, But Light Comes in the Morning.
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