ples of justice that transcend time, place, and circumstances? Is justice absolute or relative? Given the extreme situation the perpetrators where in, are they innocent or guilty? I found Judge Keen was the only judge implementing the criminal justice system as it should be. The other judge’s involvement in the case was like this: Truepenny cannot handle it; Foster is saying since they were in a “state of nature” then they should be dismissed; Tatting is confused and too emotionally involved; and Handy wants the masses to react to the case and make a circus out of it. This fictional case shows the divergent views of judges who work under the same judicial system and have different philosophical approaches to capital punishment, which ,in this case, is death. The case truly represents the daily struggle in the American legal system which is really an adversarial system of law. To refer to a justice system as a system, there must be fixed principles of justice which all the officers of the law must follow. Without due process, the system of justice would lack fairness and would fail to represent society’s judgment as to an individual’s guilt or innocence.2 The morality of capital punishment causes heated debate whenever there is an execution. Many people believe that the death sentence discourages those who might commit horrible crimes. To these people, since life is precious, the death penalty helps to affirm this fact. Others believe a civilized society has no right to put another person to death, especially when there is a lack of strong evidence. For example, Gary Graham also known by his adapted African name (Shaka Sankofa) was killed despite the lack of physical evidence linking him to the crime scene. The whole case against Gary depended on the testimony of a single eyewitness. The question is, has justice been done or not? Most of the industrialized world has abolished the death senten...
