Scotsman.com News - Latest News - Accuser's Credibility Is the Key in Michael Jackson Trial

Scotsman.com News - Latest News - Accuser's Credibility Is the Key in Michael Jackson Trial The boy who cried wolf brought crowds of people to his aid before they stopped believing him. The passage of time will show the common sense result, that there is a reasonable doubt. It is described by The Scotsman, at 6:44pm Sunday 29th May. It indicates that the boy, the key witness, more likely than not, has been convinced by his mother to tell the story. Each time he tells it, details are left out. By not presenting hard evidence but possible corrupt testimony the prosecution steers away from the jury defocusing from the simple conflict of the child and his cancer driven pity vs Jackson's tragically mistaken sense of proportion. If they only have that to consider, then the emotional value is in their favor.

Maybe I have missed something here, but it seems a little light on the "evidence" and it is a crimnal prosecution. Maybe the police caught the whole thing on camera, or worse, maybe someone at Never Never given a licence to film for eight months, did, when they were not suppposed to, and they gained a little more than Michael's confidence. Either way, we may have missed it. As far as I can tell, Michael Jackson could be found innocent, but if there is some other factor that means that he is guilty one does rather hope, for the sake of the US Justice system, that it is evidence rather than conveniently prepared and dished up "facts", if that is what they turn out to be.

The media do not seem to be willing to bet either way. Guilty or not, Jackson is the Bush Adminstration's moral wedge by which it can compass its way to religious domination of social values and not necessarily traditional religious social values, either. Rather new world order Christian fundamentals.

Fundamentalism rarely produces a reasonable justice system. Misjudgement, like Shappel Corby being jailed for 20 years when there are terrorists getting only 2-1/2 years. The Indosian justice system has no concept of official error. There seems to be no defence. The court can ignore the obvious and proceed to offend the rest of the world with blatent cruelty. It only need deport Shappel Corby and be done with it, handing her indictment back to the Australian Governent that is responsible for her. She was on holiday and accuses an Australian baggage handler - next, some Australian baggage handlers are themselves being brought up on Australian heroin smuggling operations. Co-incidence? I don't think so.

That Shappel Corby is more likely innocent than not comes from her immediate concern for her mother on realizing the horror of her sentence. 20 years, even if she were guilty (when no evience has been admissable, guilt is doubtful as it has not been established, not guilty is the only verdict) is unecessarily harsh for 4-1/2 kg of cannabis. It is ironic that a cold blooded calculating psychotic murdered a man for no particular reason then attacked his girlfriend and her friend with a sword, severing off one of her hands (later reattached, we are told). He was also sentenced, on the same day, to 20 years without parole. A special sentence for bad bad types. Shappel Corby would be scared off after 3 days in an Indonesian prison. They need not worry,. she will never return to their fair but probably polluted shores.

Neither will anybody not prepared to risk trusting luggage handlers not to interfere with their luggage.. They do. Customs Officers also inspect our bagage. Heaven help us if they start to interfere with the luggage.

The jury have different minds to the rest pf us. They may not react the same as "everyone else". They may come to different conclusions bearing witness to the actual personalities involved. One can not fault the defence for preventing their "key witness" not to take the stand.

However, Jackson may not be allowed to be innocent before proof of guilt is presented.

It may be a little late for proof to be presented, since the prosecution has rested its case. Do the media, or any commentators, in passing judgement, not do the "system" a disfavour? Is it actually quite hard to maintain the equalibrium of calm separation that an emotional case such as this may require when, whichever finding is made, one can be quite sure of a value in telling one's story after it.

It could be considered a crime to profit from close connection with such a case. It could be deemed criminal to ride on the shirtails of justice.

Insanity Plea falls flat

Personality problem and P use do not constitute legal "insanity".

Guilt is established when responsibility can be assigned. Therefore, in criminal cases for minors, or for the mentally incompetent, guilt may not be established beyond a reasonable doubt.

In this case a man was murdered by the now convicted defendant, in cold blood to "send a message" to police. The defendant looks wide eyed and crazed at the jury but they were not intimited or did they flinch from finding him guilty.

The judge handed down a 20 year non-parole jail term as the prisoner in the dock yelled out "bring back the electric chair".

Does this mean that there is a difference between legal "insanity" and actual irrationality?

The legal precident that P use can not justify crimes appears to have been set.

Children and Crime in New Zealand

When a child turns 17 the law stops protecting and starts stepping in where anti social activity becomes something that is being caused by a person empowered by "society" to make choices. When those choices include hurting other people, the law steps in to protect the other people.

Liberal forces will tell us we should be trying to rehabilitate the criminal. Progressive thinkers believe that is the evolved way to proceed. The criminal has made their pleasure known - they want to cause movement. They want to show someone fundamental that they can make things happen, and underneath that they want to show that they can survive.

The trouble with difficult childhoods is the amount of attention not placed on normal progression. To much time get spent looking at how to escape the difficulty or the memory of the difficulty. Violence toward children, when it is inflicted young enough, can cause developmental abberations. Ritual violence or repeated instances of pain inflicted with cruelty subverts the normal social process of being rewarded for social behaviour and having antisocial tendencies blunted by educative progress.

For, what is a society but an organised system of interactions. Social conditions are setup by law - laws enable me to complain and thus control the status of things. This control is an artificial endowment. But it serves to carve out a behaviour pattern that we become familiar with, and a behaviour pattern we can live with.

Unfortunately, the process of criminal youth justice assumes that the child comes from parents who are at fault. When a child commits too many crimes, the state removes the child from the home. The political divide in New Zealand is between efforts to reintegrate and a failing infrastructure called Child Youth and Family Support with its very unfortunate acronym, CYFS. Subject to Government intervention and loss of its leader, this Government body chases up failing families, truants and young offenders.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of demand for the services of CYFS. The staff turnover is terrific and the quality of staff is inconsistent to low with some exceptions. The problem with a system that fails to care adequately when it is the safety net itself, and a system that takes a care of custody over children and mixes troubled adolescents along with criminal adolescents is a recipe for more of the same.

To make CYFS responsive to the amplified needs of this modern world may not be possible. It is understaffed and the staff seem to have a way of designated if a CYFS field worker is "ok" or "not up to it".

We could value our young, but it would be best to start in the home, where the damage is actually done. But to do that would take another huge rip in the social fabric. One that may not mend.