Scot-Free

Trey Smith

Every month you call home to see how things are going in your parent's lives. Like most people, there are the usual ups and downs. One week your mother tells you that the next door neighbor, Mrs. Farnsworth, died. A month or two later, you learn that the Farnsworth house is up for sale.

Several months go by. In one of your typical conversations, your father hints at some trouble, but he doesn't provide any details. It's nothing to get worked up about, he tells you. However, from this point forward, you can sense a tension in your parent's voices. Finally, during one call, your mother reveals that there is a major issue with the new neighbor.

Mr. Fuddyduddy, the man who purchased the Farnsworth house, has made a whole slew of property claims that severely encroach on your parent's modest property. One day, after returning from a brief trip to visit friends, your parents found that Fuddyduddy had erected a fence on THEIR property, not his! It was clearly on their property by more than 25 feet and the fence itself was uglier than sin.

Your father marched over to Fuddyduddy's house to demand that he remove the fence. The neighbor refused and produced an almost unintelligible drawing that claimed the property was his.

This wasn't the only affront. On another occasion, Fuddyduddy ripped out a portion of your parent's front yard and replaced it with a basketball court for his grandson. On another occasion, this vile neighbor rode his ATV over your mother's prized rose garden and then flatly refused to pay for any damage.

Your father tried to get the police to intervene, but they seemed to be buddy buddy with the mega wealthy Fuddyduddy and so nothing happened. Finally, your parents took him to court, but since he is very rich, his army of lawyers had seemed quite adept at all sorts of delaying tactics.

A day comes when you call your parent's home and there is no answer. You call the next day with the same result. This goes on for a week. Growing concerned, you call the police department in the town they live in. To your utter horror, you learn that they were both murdered the previous week and that Mr. Fuddyduddy has been arrested for the crime.

You fly home to take care of your parent's estate AND to see that justice is done. Upon arrival, you learn that Fuddyduddy has been released on his own recognizance and is back home in the house next door. While the police and prosecution seem to conduct the murder investigation about as slowly as humanly possible, Fuddyduddy goes to court to claim your parent's property as his own!

Even more incredulously, you learn that some of Fuddyduddy's friends in the legislature -- politicians elected because of their hard stances on "law and order" -- are working feverishly to provide Fuddyduddy with retroactive immunity. They are crafting legislation to ensure he gets off scot-free for a crime he has all but admitted to.

After intense lobbying, the legislature passes the bill and, in signing it, the governor says, "It is a time to look forward, not backward." The investigation into your parent's murder is closed without ANY charges being brought against anyone.

To add insult to injury, Fuddyduddy prevails in HIS court case and is awarded your parents house and property. All you are left with is intense rage and a broken heart.

This story provides a loose example of what Glenn Greenwald writes about in With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful. Greenwald clearly shows how, first, the telecom industry and, later, Wall Street were allowed to commit crimes of mammoth proportions, but were granted retroactive immunity by Bush/Obama and the US Congress. They were allowed to invade the privacy of or financially defraud millions of Americans with legal impunity.

In essence, the rule of law is dead in this nation. There use to be equality before the law, but now there are two sets of legal codes. One set allows the elite to do as they please with little fear of accountability. The other set is for the rest of us and it tends to be harsh and inflexible.

Going back to our little story, if the roles had been reversed -- your father had killed Fuddyduddy -- we all know the situation would have played out differently. Your father would not have been released on his own recognizance. No, a high bail would have been set and your parents probably wouldn't have had the funds to meet it, so your dad would have sat in jail throughout the intensive and meticulous investigation.

More importantly, no one in the legislature would have worked to grant your father any type of retroactive immunity. In fact, all those "law and order" politicians -- dear friends of the deceased Fuddyduddy -- most likely would have worked to stiffen the legal penalties for murder and would have utilized the mainstream media to tell the world what a monster your father is.