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Lack of Conviction
The culture of victimhood enters the jury room.
(Page 2 of 2)
But it is not a fail-safe device, only a help. A government of laws cannot stand against a people who can see only victims, against jurors who believe neither in criminals' responsibility nor in their own. Once, runaway juries driven by rage gave us legal lynching, a complement to the illegal kind. They would not reason, so they could find no reasonable doubt.
Today, their successors feel not rage but pity, not hatred but empathy. They, too, do not reason, but neither do they doubt. They can look at proof of guilt and still find innocence--innocence in the victimhood of the victimizer.
Many of the ordinary people who make up juries desire neither justice nor revenge. They desire absolution, the obliteration of all responsibility. We have created a culture of excuse, and it has conquered our courtrooms--not by judicial fiat but by the most democratic of means. Our juries have gone soft on crime.
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