Legal vs. Moral
Sinning and grinning in Bill Clinton’s America.

Mr. Dunphy* is an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department
August 7, 2001 8:15 a.m.

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 .)