Yesterday I went to the Noblesville courthouse for the first time. While the interior of the building amazed me (beautiful!), the proceedings did not. The sentencing of a friend from church brought enough of his friends and family to fill the courtroom, but the evidence of support from the community seemed not to affect the judge at all.
Over the course of this trial (well more than a year), being a witness to how our justice system works has been a lesson showing how sheltered my life is. While my view of the entire situation is sketchy, the prosecution's callus drive towards convictions and 'winning' at the expense of logic and reason toppled my engineering-centered world. Rather than a well-balanced and reasoned impression of events, the prosecution shows its single-minded hunger for delivering statistics that impress an uncaring populace.
The fact that their case lacked facts forced them into second gear, intimidation. My personality lends itself towards building consensus and using positive-focused language. My second gear is devoted to making decisions based on well-founded fact and risk minimization. Perhaps our justice system must work the way that it does, but this was my first view of how direct and unwashed the system becomes once it gets its clutches into someone.
Unfortunately, right or wrong, my friend will be spending a few months (up to a year, really) in what could be called the department of incorrections. When you read this, and later, should it occur to you again, please lift a prayer for my friend and his family.