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 his
may come as a shock to you, gentle readers, but there was a time
early in my police career when I considered going to law school.
As much as I relished the thrills afforded by fighting crime and
villainy on the streets, it was the combat that took place in the
courthouse that fascinated me. Making the arrest is but half the
battle, indeed the easier half. The true reward comes from shepherding
a case through the minefield of the legal system, ultimately persuading
twelve jurors (often thick-headed ones) that the man now meekly
seated before them cradling a Bible deserves to be convicted and
sent away. Many have been the shiny-suit defense attorney who sought
to make a monkey out of Officer Dunphy on the witness stand, only
to find his client bundled off to the jug and himself standing —
or stooping — among the lower primates.
But better
judgment prevailed, for when I further investigated the legal profession
I came to a disturbing conclusion. Though my friends in the trade
have for the most part avoided this dark fate, something terrible
very often happens to people who attend law school: They turn into
lawyers. Law students are taught to subordinate morality to legality,
to believe that any and all conduct is permissible and even defensible
if no statute has been enacted against it. Only those students whose
moral compasses remain fully magnetized and properly oriented emerge
from the process unchanged. Hence we endure one disturbing aspect
of the Condit circus, which has now predictably evolved from tragedy
to comedy and finally to farce. On the various cable channels there
is no shortage of men and women with degrees from prestigious law
schools and years of practice behind them who, for the mere compensation
of appearing on television, will say with a perfectly straight face
that Gary Condit has done nothing wrong — and should not even be
criticized — because we have no proof he has broken any laws. This
is Bill Clinton's America, where the only sin is judgementalism.
As loathsome
as I may find the typical lawyer, I am nonetheless a fervent supporter
of the American legal system, including one's right to the presumption
of innocence before the law. But this presumption-of-innocence business
has come to be misunderstood over the years, hasn't it? The presumption
of innocence constrains the government from taking punitive action
against a citizen until he has been afforded due process and the
case against him has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. While
I might find a certain level of satisfaction in plucking a few troublemakers
off the streets and casting them into the tower, I understand that
other police officers might not act as judiciously as I would in
employing such tactics. I therefore accept the constitutional restraints
placed upon me.
Although my
authority as a police officer remains checked by these restraints,
my sense of morality is not. O. J. Simpson was acquitted by a jury
of his peers (recall the above remark about thick-headed jurors),
so I as a police officer must treat him as I would any other citizen.
But, unlike those jurors, I have not surrendered my common sense.
I remain free to draw reasonable inferences from the evidence presented
against Mr. Simpson, even if the jury irrationally failed to do
so. If while off duty I encounter him on the street, I am perfectly
entitled to flip him the old bird and voice my opinion that he is
a murdering so-and-so. And I eagerly await the opportunity to do
just that.
And so it is
with Mr. Condit. Granted, we have yet to learn of any direct links
between the congressman and Chandra Levy's disappearance, and all
day, every day we are serenaded by the Condit chorus: "There's
no proof . . . He's not a suspect . . ." and on and on and
on. But none of this prevents me from reaching my own conclusion
about his behavior, even as most of his fellow legislators try to
pretend none of this has occurred. Mr. Condit's every action since
the investigation began seemed designed not to assist the police
in locating Chandra, or even to salvage whatever scant traces of
honor that might remain in him, but rather to keep his congressional
hide out of the cooler. I don't know what it all means, exactly,
but it means something. And it isn't good.
There was a
time in America when Mr. Condit might have been brought down to
the police station, where he would have been ushered into a small
room for a long talk with a big cop. At the conclusion of this conversation
the police would very likely have had a better idea of his involvement
in Chandra's disappearance. Or, at the very least, the congressman
would be far less prone to maintaining that sickening grin of his.
Alas, such methods, though effective, were found lacking in constitutional
authority. Mr. Condit thus remains free to flit about and grin like
a madman for the cameras.
We may never
learn what became of Chandra Levy, but this much is clear: Gary
Condit is a bum. He may not belong in jail, but neither does he
belong in Congress.
(*Jack
Dunphy is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are
his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management
.)
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