November 5, 2009 from the WMRA Blog
An invitation to think . . .
Charlottesville listener Marva Barnett sent me this reaction to Nina Totenberg’s summation of Wednesday’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court in the case POTTAWATTAMIE COUNTY V. MCGHEE.
“What is just? What is legal? They are all too often not the same thing. Nina Totenberg’s recounting of the current Supreme Court case about prosecutorial immunity shines a spotlight on what Victor Hugo called “the quarrel between rights and law.” Not until that quarrel is resolved, he wrote (in the preface to his collection of socially-conscious speeches), will society reach true civilization.
In this case, attorneys for the Council Bluffs, Iowa, prosecutors argue explicitly, bluntly, that Americans have no constitutional right not to be framed for a crime they didn’t commit. Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee were imprisoned in 1977 for a murder they had no hand in. Tenaciously stating his innocence, Mr. Harrington was finally released in 2003 after a case review in which eyewitnesses recanted their testimony. Under Iowa law neither man has legal recourse to receive compensation for the 25 years lost because of fabricated evidence. Their suit against the Council Bluffs police and prosecutor for violating of constitutional rights has reached the Supreme Court. An objective case summary shows that the police and prosecutor ignored evidence pointing to another, well-connected suspect and accepted testimony against Mr. Harrington from a man with a criminal record who erred in his story about the murder location and weapon involved.
Still, attorneys for the prosecutors, while hypothetically admitting that Mr. Harrington might have been framed, contend that such framing is legal, though perhaps not just. Victor Hugo must be raging in his Paris Pantheon tomb! Were he able to put pen to paper, he would this morning be dashing off a public letter. Justice is divine, he would write, far above the laws that people create. When everyone can see where justice lies in a cause, should we not choose what is just over what is legal? Why are laws not written to promote justice? Human rights come from God, and laws cannot morally overcome them. Jean Valjean, after 19 years at hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread, learned this from a man of God. The author of Les Misérables would be making the case for Mr. Harrington, human rights, and justice.”
Marva Barnett, creator of Victor Hugo on Things That Matter (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009)
Marva Barnett’s piece is not, of course, a discussion of the legal intricacies of procedure and precedence that will weigh heavily in the Supreme Court’s decision. Instead it addressed the question–as WMRA’s Tom DuVal, with whom I love to talk over these kinds of knotty questions, pointed out–“should anyone be allowed to get away with unjust acts just because a law says it’s okay?”
If you’ve got a few moments to devote to thinking about the distinctions between what is legal and what is moral, I’d suggest taking a look at Ms. Totenberg’s summation and then re-read Marva Barnett’s challenging reaction. I did both yesterday, and I’m still pondering the issues involved.
POSTED BY MOST OF MARTHA WOODROOF IN ONE PLACE AT 8:21 AM
http://hopeful-ink.blogspot.com/2009/11/invitation-to-think.html