Had their moms been in the jury box instead of a seven barely-interested citizens, it wouldn’t have surprised me if both got sent to their rooms, got
grounded for a year, with words like apology, honesty, reconciliation, truth and humility prominent in their release-from-mom’s-house-arrest
documents.
I’m fascinated by the meaning of justice,
from the age of Old Testament prophecy through the medieval, then the Renaissance
and the modern eras to the present. Old Testament justice takes exception to
using false weights and measures in trade and bearing false witness and trying
(fruitlessly, I might assert) to enforce compliance with cruel and unusual
penalties for breaking laws: Leviticus 20:10 decrees that both parties to an
adultery shall be killed.
In fact, a trip through Leviticus reveals a justice system
heavily weighted toward defending a peoplehood against contamination by foreign,
idol-worshiping neighbours, and in the stoning of miscreants, an
ancient iteration of the firing squad in which the people register their
support for the justice of the punishment by participating in its execution. Generally
put, criminal justice in Leviticus is based on the “life for a life” principle:
should you happen to shoot a neighbour’s prized Holstein mistaking it for a
moose, fairness says the neighbour is entitled to your prized Jersey. There’s some
restorative justice in that, alongside an arguably good way to make justice
fair.
How the jury came up with the differential in the dollar
value of one defamation compared to the other is well beyond me, except that it
caters for a sensibility of how much each of the combatants could have earned
had they not been defamed … where Depp’s loss would arguably be greater than Heard’s.
I listened to some of the cross-examination of Heard by
Depp’s lawyers. I saw video of the Depp idol worshippers outside the courthouse cheering
every blow upon a woman obviously struggling with some serious mental issues,
crying out to see her blood spilled, her entrails hung in the public square. To
say more than this about that would be well above my pay grade, but I saw
little of justice in the outcome, possibly because Depp’s “this jury gave me my
life back,” seemed to miss the obvious corollary that he gained his monetary,
star-life back at the expense of hers.
If that’s justice, it certainly isn’t the kind the prophet
was talking about in Micah 6:8, where the admonition to “do justice” is
followed by “love mercy” and then “walk humbly.” A closer look at most criminal
and civil court “justice” so often displays an underlying assumption that
justice must be stern and unflinching, and give no nod to mercy or humility or any other signal of weakness. We
tend to like our justice adversarial, not restorative.
A truck driver fails to stop at a crossing and this failure results
in the death of sixteen hockey players, the driver and coach and many more
injured. We’d be right, I think, in assuming at the outset that restoration to
a previous state for those involved is simply impossible, while at the same
time, acknowledging that there is no eye for an eye, Levitical- or Sharia-like “justice”
to be applied here: the driver cannot be flayed, mocked and crucified sixteen
times. But how many years of incarceration would smell enough like justice? And
if he and his family were deported to a country from which they fled in hopes
of a better life, would that help to satisfy the thirst for justice? Or are we
talking about retribution, revenge here?
In the Depp/Heard civil court trial, justice—or its lack—was
measured in dollars and cents. That Depp said the judgment in his favour gave
his life back is a reminder that injustice touches much more than the
pocketbook: dignity, standing, self-respect, reputation, for starters, and
assigning dollar value to any of these is very tricky. The value justice
systems place on intangibles is telling: that Amber Heard has no money to pay
the settlement, was shown by evidence to be truth-telling unreliable, (possibly
a compulsive inventor of “truth”) yet “fit
to stand trial,” none of that figures in the judgment and indeed, can’t. To be
restorative in the case of estrangement between Hollywood marriage partners, of
course, invokes the question, “which of this person’s marriage arrangements are
we supposed to be arbitrating here?” To speak of justice in an unjust,
capitalist-consumerist environment is another story, but highly relevant in most
every case where justice is being sought.
Food for thought: CoSA is a program meant to prevent
reoffending by persons released from prison after a sentence for sex crime. Circles
of Support and Accountability, it’s called and it’s largely funded through local
donations and the federal government. CoSA has had to lobby hard for continued
federal funding and is facing pressure to do with less and less support from
that source. The principle of restorative justice is central to CoSA;
statistically, it’s been highly effective in reducing recidivism among released
sex offenders. Read about it here.
Some would say that the switch from eye-for-an-eye to adversarial to discovery to restorative justice is the central theme of the New Testament. I tend to agree. Isn't "being reborn" itself an acknowledgement that I've been a recipient of undeserved reconciliation, restoration? A justice borne of mercy?
"You can't beat a child into behaving gently." -Klavier Onk
