Living in the gangsta’s paradise

Another tit-for-tat balancing of the books among those who feel the only way to get respect in this life is to eradicate those who fail to give it.

It’s not so much that the justice system has failed in this country, but that it has been brushed aside, branded as irrelevant, ineffectual and, perhaps worst of all, uncool.

What does a police officer or a judge know about our circumstances, the combination of events and feelings that has led an individual to this point of crisis where action – crude, violent, decisive action – just has to be taken? While the vast majority of us would urge the young, gun-toting and knife-wielding men to let the law sort it out, when you look at the way the proceedings are conducted, it is still not a case of rubber- stamping the black and white situation the perpetrators see. It’s lawyer versus lawyer, picking holes in each other’s argument and trying to influence the verdict in any way they can.

If someone wants to make you look bad by raking up your transgressions, he will do it. None of us has a flawless past and it only takes a bit of digging and putting a certain slant on actions and occurrences to undermine what we would see as our solid, honest footing.

Apply the same process to someone with a history of getting into trouble and that footing, which was pretty crumbly in the first place, quickly falls apart.

The exchanges between two lawyers in court often come down to little more than a squabble such as we have all endured (and probably engineered) in our private lives.

The only difference between domestic bickering and the professional kind is that the language used in court is unlikely to be obscene and there is no chance of drawing the proceedings out by sulking, or storming out to spend time with friends who are on your side. A courtroom drama on film can be a gripping way to spend an hour or two, but it’s only fun because we’re not actually involved in it.

We will probably have taken sides, based on what evidence we have been presented with, but it’s not us or our family or friends whose lives are on the line. It’s just Morgan Freeman doing his wise, fatherly utmost to see that everything turns out for the best.

As Paul Newman’s downtrodden, heavy-drinking lawyer character says in The Verdict, the legal system is not there to provide justice, but the possibility of justice.

By the way, if you prefer your illustrations a little more up to date, just watch a few episodes of The Good Wife. Like so much in life, the system is not perfect, but it’s the best we’ve got.

I once interviewed a lawyer, a trim, good-looking young woman with all the charm of a scorpion, and asked her why she had chosen that profession. You can’t predict what someone’s going to say, which is what makes a good interview so fascinating, but I fleetingly imagined that she wanted innocent people cleared and guilty ones convicted – something philanthropic like that. She replied that she had been in court one day for whatever reason and had been impressed by the performance of one of the lawyers, who had tied his opponent up in knots.

Is that really the point of the exercise? Never mind the truth and the rightful outcome, let’s see some fancy footwork? Imagine being married to her; imagine having a trivial barney across the kitchen table about why you insisted on buying Cheerios when you know she prefers cornflakes.

The Paul Newman lawyer, who, as the central character, is likeable, made a remark that, sadly, made him less believable. Preparing for a trial prosecuting doctors for negligence, on being told who the defence attorney was, he remarked to his veteran lawyer friend, “He’s a good man,” by which he meant a skilled practitioner.

“A good man?” the friend spluttered.

“He’s the prince of ****ing darkness.” These references may be fictional, but they’re a reflection of real life. All the world’s a stage, and the courtroom is one of the grandest stages of all. If you go in there guilty as hell and lying through your teeth, you’re expecting your legal counsel to pull a rabbit out of a hat and get you off.

Similarly, if you’re innocent, you want the truth to prevail, and that may involve some trickery on your lawyer’s part to keep the train on the track to justice while the opposition seeks to derail it.

Those who take the law into their own hands must do so in the knowledge that they’re going to have to go down the official route in the end, but probably with a far more serious charge to answer than whatever slight drove them to act in the first place