Unjust Outcomes Quotes
His ethical lapse led to significant reforms.
This appears to be the only time in the last century where a President ridiculed and attacked the American Justice System. President Trump appeard not to realzie that as President, he was the Chief Magistrate of the United States.
Althought most of Seale’s “solutions” were counterproductive and/or ineffectual, and the Black Panthers were regarded as public enemies, Seale was right about some of his complaints including this one. In most of the South the changes forced by the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts where just beginning to have significant effect. So there were proportionately very few Blacks on Southern Juries. Even in the North, Blacks did not register to vote in proportion to their numbers so since jury pools were then usually drawn from voter registration lists, Blacks were statistically underrepresented. When a few Blacks were put on a jury panel, the prosecutor had the right of preemptory challenge as did the defense. But there were enough challenges so that the prosecutor could disqualify all the African Americans on the Jury. Even today, this is legal in many jurisdictions and although better than in 1970, then a Black defendant would rarely have African Americans on the jury of “his peers.”
Scientologists have on many occasions attacked their critics—especially former scientologists who leave the organization and disclose information about it. The organization has large economic resources and Hubbard in this quotation recommended filing of lawsuit—just for the purpose of harassment to silence critics. The “demise” refers to financial stress to the critic in having to defend himself in court and the mental stress that it can place on people who are already under stress for other reasons. This quotation shows that lawsuits for harassment was a conscious strategy of the Scientologists. However, the law is such that in any given suit, the victim must prove that the particular case was part of the strategy, and of course the current Scientology leadership claim that the harassment strategy was a thing of the past although many still complain every year.
There is a constant tension between swift justice and due process. Some say that “justice delayed is justice denied” but at the same time the worst injustice is to rush to judgment and convict the wrong person or fail to convict the perpetrator because the prosecution was insufficiently prepared. Both are major problems of our criminal justice system.
