Showing posts with label judge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label judge. Show all posts

Sunday, 29 December 2024

Jury on Trial?

Juror #2
Director: Clint Eastwood

Yet another big one from Clint Eastwood. This 94-year-old may have directed his last movie, but one can never say never. This one makes us think, as did his previous offerings, like 'Letters from Iwo Jima', 'Flags of Our Fathers', and 'Gran Torino'.

It is a courtroom drama along the lines of '12 Angry Men', where the moral decision of convicting a person of a serious crime is the mainstay. This film, however, goes one step further. One of the jurors, Juror #2, may have committed the murder in the case he is judging. On the day of the incident, the Juror witnessed the tussle between the accused and his girlfriend at a bar. The girlfriend was found dead later that night by a creek beside a road. The accused was seen following his girlfriend in his car. With his destructive anger management issues, he was naturally accused of having mortally wounded his girlfriend. 

The trouble is Juror #2 is a recovering alcoholic and was nursing the pain of losing a pair of twins a year previously. He was fighting his inner demons to resist the bottle again. Self-restraint allegedly won the day. As he left the bar, he drove the same country road as the other two. Just as the Juror bent to pick up his phone to answer a call from his wife, he felt a thud. He looked up and saw nothing except for a deer crossing sign. He checked his car for damage and moved on, assuming he had hit a running deer. 

Juror #2 slowly realises, as he sits through the case, and with sudden flashes of his accident from the same night in his mind, that he could be the killer instead of the accused. What was he to do? Resign from his post, which may turn investigations towards him. At a time when he is looking forward to being sober for so long and ushering in his soon-to-be-born child, the last thing he needs is to go to prison.

With all the evidence stacked against the accused, argued by a DA with political ambitions, the accused is sure to be incarcerated for the crime he did not commit. A moral dilemma ensues within the Juror. Should he ensure that the jury delivers a unanimous decision of guilty so he (the Juror) is off the hook? If a mistrial is declared when the jury cannot convict him, the police may have to investigate again, and the Juror's name may crop up.

Does the truth reveal itself in the end? If the truth is so powerful and can maintain balance, why must we defend it? Is it everyone's moral duty to protect the truth no matter what it may do to them and the people around them? In the same breath, we insist that many versions of the truth exist. Who determines which is true, anyway? Many versions of it seem right from their perspective. Have they not heard of the Rashomon effect? Sometimes, truth is watered down to preserve peace.

Still, we insist on a fair hearing and that everyone deserves to be adequately represented. And we realise that many guilty criminals, with the power of the best legal minds that money can buy behind them, get away scot-free through technicalities. The innocent, too, can be punished with overwhelming circumstantial evidence. When a notoriously bad person who had escaped convictions before is penalised for a crime he did not commit, we say that his crimes have finally caught up with him. We justify the wrongful conviction akin to a person who lives by the sword and dies by it. Are the lawyers less enthusiastic about defending such criminals, or is wealth the determinant?

Are you being dishonest by putting your self-interest above doing the right thing? After all, no man is an island. On the other hand, no innocent man should be punished for something he did not do. Some feel pressured to mete out instant justice. We take shortcuts and cut down on paperwork. We don blinkers to confirm our biases and refuse to see beyond our scope of vision.

When a miscarriage of justice happens right in front of your eyes, just how far would you go to right the wrong, especially when it involves an admission of guilt? With the admission of error, you must bear the brunt of losing face and position. 

There are no answers, only questions. The film ends on a cliffhanger, probably on purpose, so viewers can ponder it and draw conclusions. It brings viewers into serious discussions on truth, justice, morality, and guilt.



Wednesday, 14 April 2021

We built this country!

Some stories I have told and some that I haven't
Author: VC George (2021)

The powers that be wants us to believe their narrative. They assert that their concocted tale of how history happened keeps true to the natural chain of events. They create a smokescreen to justify the turn of events to explain social strata's current status and how social justice should be. 

Our history likes to paint Indian immigration to the peninsula as a single wave of settlement. With a single stroke of ink, they put all Indian in the same basket. That they were brought in the colonial masters as indentured labour (a milder wording for bonded slaves) to milk out not only the juices of rubber trees but also the milk the wealth of the nation. It was no coincidence that the Malay Peninsular was referred to as "Swarnabhumi" (Land of Gold). In the same breath, these keepers of Nation history declare that the British never really colonised us. They were just administrators

Sorry to burst your echo chamber, purveyors of fairy tales. Indians were sailing the seven seas even way before the Malaccan Sultanate, often quoted as the spark of Malay identity. The Malabari Indians even showed Francis Light the route Pulo Pinang, the island they had been frequenting for so long. How many of us know the Malaccan Sultanate kingmaker, Tun Perak, was of Indian extract? But then so was the despotic and corrupt Tun Mutahir, an Indian Muslim. On the royalty side, Raja Kasim who was summoned to the throne after Raja Muhammad's knifing fiasco had a mother who was Indian.

The Indians who reached here were traders and master boat builders in the early part of the country's history. Indian sojourners then sauntered in later at the end of the 19th century, equipped with the best of what English education could offer. They arrived at the behest of the colonial masters to help out in the day-to-day administrative work of a cash cow of a nation that paid for half of the Englishmen's extravagances back in their Motherland. 

Unlike other European colonialists who hurriedly left their posts in a hurry in total pandemonium, the British actually left Malaya with a comprehensive post-independence roadmap. They cast in stone the Constitution and the citizens' charter to ensure equality for all.

Somewhere along the way, this arrangement was hijacked. Politicians with self-serving agendas and a blank cheque for eternal power decided to use what they learnt from George Orwell and Joseph Goebbels to good use. They rewrote as they saw fit.  They knew that he who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. They understood that they can create the illusion of truth by repeating a lie often enough to become the truth. 

They try to say that the indentured Indian labourer got immersed in estate life only to be torn about in the quagmire as the British planters left their plantations and the new owners decided to cash out. The Indian poor were forgotten in the greater scheme of things. Lost of job, home and wanting of skills drove them to the wild side of society, a world of crime and subsequently justified police brutality.

That is why we need more books like these - to tell the contribution of different communities to what was one time expected to emerge as one of emerging Asia's Tigers.  Sadly, the other sibling cubs have all gone places. We are left alone as the sick and wounded feline without a roar and probably needing crutches soon. 

VC George, a 90 years old retired Court of Appeal judge, tell us his life and times growing up in Klang in pre-WW2 Malaya all through his journey into adulthood and his illustrious career. He (Honourable, Lord or just George) has inked his narration in 100 short notes, which tend to end up with an unexpected twist or a witty footnote. This man was there in the flesh during the nation's birth, just like the many others referred to as pendatang (newcomers, just off the boat). These wrongly called pendatangs are the very people who helped to produce enviable students of international calibre, established medical facilities that transformed our health services to be at par with international standards, founded research centres and universities, and gave dignity to august Halls of Justice in the country.  

A good read. It is filled with many anecdotes and 'one liners'. It tells of a time when people would take jokes in a good spirit and not be offended or raise a big hue and cry, claiming victimisation. 


Sunday, 4 June 2017

How do you feel when people judge you? Do you judge people as well? #JudgingPeople

Written for IndiSpire... Edition 172

Growing up in the poorer side of town, people generally did not form any high opinion about me. My physical attributes did not compensate for the deficiency. Whether one likes to admit or not, society judges. A fairer skin would perform better in the impression department and I fail miserably. I would not be surprised if people do judge me to be incapable, unimpressive and unconvincing. But the question is, "do I give a damn?"

It is a free world and everyone is entitled to the opinions. Just like how I have mine. I do not owe anyone a living just like they, on me.

One humbling experience about judging others was shoved down upon me a good 24 years ago... This posting is an old one from my collection in Rifle Range Boy.


Back in early 90s, whilst I was still a green horned newbie at the art of healing in Malacca, I was approached in the course of my daily dealings, by a lady who despite her outwardly ultra conservative appearance of being dressed in a hijab, looked in the eye and asked whether there was any way that her 3month fetus could be screened for Down Syndrome.

From her dressing, it did not require a rocket scientist to guess her views on prenatal screening and termination of pregnancy. After a protracted discussion, I discovered that her previous child has Down Syndrome and needed multiple surgeries for heart septal defects and Hirschsprung's disease even before he was one. Seeing the puny one cut open and pricked repeatedly was just simply too much for her to stomach. And the monthly follow up the Capital City just drained here physically and financially. Even before she could recover from the trauma of having a special child, in rolls in another pregnancy (through the act of Man and The Divine Powers) in came the ensuing uncertainties. Rather than seeing history repeating itself, she was willing to undergo whatever test even a termination of pregnancy, if warranted than to deliver a Down Syndrome baby despite her religious conviction and country laws because she had first-hand experience of dealing with a special child.

It is easy to judge others using our life experience as a yardstick of how everybody else should live. When a similar malady strikes us, all the rules and regulations, which in normal times would be fought tooth and nail to be upheld, just goes out of the window!
This reminds me of a Lat cartoon published in the local dailies at a time when moral policing was the flavour of the month (it still is). It was a caricature of two elderly husband and wife couples in their 70s. The husband was reading aloud about the banning of Muslim girls in beauty pageants. The wife replies that it is improper to expose too much in public. To this, the husband replies, "I wonder who was the 1947 Miss Ratu Ronggeng? And the wife bows her head in embarrassment!It goes on to say that we make rules and regulations for others to follow but when we are the affected party, somehow the bar is lowered or the goal post is shifted!
We judge others using yardsticks impressed upon us in our childhood. We are told that is the way, the only way to do it. With age, hopefully, maturity and a few hard knocks and dent from the School of Life, we soon realise that we have our ways, they have their ways, the right way, the correct way, the only way, may just not exist!

Saturday, 21 December 2013

Don't judge me!

Dear Thelma,

I am a 19 year old lady with very low self esteem right now. I am writing with the hope that you may empathise with my predicament. Hopefully you can help me justify with the big action that I am going to do right now.
Growing up in the interior of Sarawak, education was not a priority. Carrying on clan's tradition and continuing the women's roles in the family was paramount to the existence of our gender. As the importance of education and need for self empowerment were not impressed upon us, we were raised to believe that we were born to serve the men folks and keep the home in pristine condition and not to stress up the men of the house. Going to school, which itself was a bore, a chore and a burden to the family, I found the long journey to school on raft and foot a nuisance. Hence, I was pleasantly and naively surprised when I joined the band of girls who started vomiting in school, not due sub-optimal preparation of canteen meals but rather because of bludgeoning dose of placental hormones and HCG on the medulla oblongata!
At the speed of lightning (very very frightening me), I saw my carefree days of childhood crush tumbling down like a deck of dominos. I was paraded through a ceremony to give a name to our lusty at the spur of the moment escapade. Very soon my physique ballooned out of proportion unimaginable even in my wildest nightmare!
At the speed of lightning too, I discovered that the man of life was a two (or maybe three) timer and also the man of another woman before me and had offsprings to prove his virility!
As I discovered that as my petite body bloated up with edema of pregnancy, my affaire d'amour with my 'The One' came crumbling down. I was just another one of the statistic of the many helpless victims of 'The One'!
A protracted pregnancy and labour ended with an offspring with essentially killed my childhood. Free time for me was folding diapers and cleaning the house. One year went on... My long lost aunt appeared from nowhere to change my life. She told me to take charge of my life. She persuaded me to crawl out of the cocoon that I have built for myself and change my life. She peeled opened my eyes to see a world more than just brooding over my misfortune.
With a renewed zest for life and the glitz for the good life, I made a drastic make over of myself. Off I came to the Peninsular for life anew.
The blinding lights of the city brought me to heights unimaginable by a village lass like me. In due time, it brought to me the acquaintance of Mr Z. The showering of gifts and attention must have drowned in his sea of love. Pretty soon the sweet fruit of passion begin to rear its ugly head. The spinning whirlwind of dizziness with accompanying sickness without motion soon ensued.
Suddenly reality hit me smack on my head! History seem to be repeating itself, yet again!
What kind of a mother am I?
One unplanned unwanted child growing up in wilderness like undergrowth, unattended to, without love and attention, without role model to follow, without a mother, unwanted and shooed away like a house fly! And now, as if bringing one wild flower to the world is not enough, I am here with another, out in the world so cold. Unsupported and unable to stand on my own two feet. How many times am I going to be the source of offspring who are a nuisance to others? What can I do? What should I do?
I want to start living as a wife and mother like anyone else, married and settled down. My partner, somehow, has other plans. He cites young age and need to improve his economic status as sufficient reason to terminate our art of love! Am I just a pawn in the game of love and sweet nothingness?
It is easy for the uppity high-browed individuals to judge me, that I deserve what I got, that I am short on the religious faculty. It is easy to judge. To err is is human, be in my shoes and you will understand....
Right here still waiting.

“Be afraid. Be very afraid.”*