Why presumption of innocence is so important

US juries get verdict wrong in one of six cases: study

And this is in the most mature democracy in the world.

The method this statistician used to do this study is both fascinating and clearly logically sound: he looked at disagreement between judges and juries. As he pointed out, if they disagree, one of them is wrong. And they agreed only 77% of the time, meaning that times when they disagree demonstrate a propensity for one of them to get it wrong.

And, of course, the direction we err, in reality, is just the opposite that our jurisprudence and decency indicate that we should err: we tend to convict the innocent.

Sad. And worse is how every conversation I have about law enforcement and criminal justice issues seems to persistently reinforce peoples' self-righteous notions that more people need to be put behind bars.

As it turns out, perhaps the problem with criminal justice is that not enough people trust it because we have not made our criminal justice system trustworthy enough, as citizens on juries and professional citizens involved with criminal justice (or civil justice, for that matter).

Hubris, the Greeks whisper to us. Hubris. That we have more answers than we really do.

Love,
Ben

Forgiveness and peace of mind and heart

I just had an email exchange with my sister, tonight, about some stuff that's been on her heart. She's been upset with me about some stuff and she just wanted to get it off her chest.

And in that exchange, I made some really important peace in my heart that I'm really grateful for.

It's around forgiveness and peace of mind and heart that we find or don't find for ourselves.

I've hurt people plenty of times in my life. We all have, when we're honest with ourselves. It's when we think we haven't that we're in real trouble, because that's when we have and we just aren't taking responsibility for it, even in our own hearts.

And the one thing that has stood out and various times in my life has been, "What if people don't want to forgive me? What will I do then?"

I forgive people fairly readily. So people generally take this for granted with me. I offer up far more apologies than I've received in my life. And while it doesn't always feel fair, what I'm learning to accept is that some people take a stronger route that involves more responsibility and part of that responsibility to be patient with folks while they take weaker pathes for awhile or make the choices they make until they find better choices.

And, tonight, after wrestling with that issue plenty in my life, I'm finding some more real peace around the fact that there really isn't much you can do about how other people choose to handle their own choices, like forgiveness, other than encourage better ways of handling things and maybe talk about the consequences of not-so-wise ways to handle things and hope for the best.

And in the meantime, you can offer yourself and everyone else a whole lot of slack. As much slack as they need. Because it's the slack they're going to need, not just the slack you want to give them in the moment. And God knows each of us needs more slack than others might want to give us but that we need at any given point in our lives.

And it just occurred to me that that issue doesn't have to have to be such a difficult one, because there really isn't much you can do, other than learn the lesson and try to not to screw up or hurt people if you can avoid it, in the future.

The standard of perfection or aggressive pressure that dominates, today, is clearly a dysfunctional one. It involves a lot of pride on the part of folks who don't want to admit how much it kind of fucks things up. But it's clearly dysfunctional, and has undermined many of the goals that we say we want to achieve. And we just won't make any forward progress until we face up to that.

So we all need plenty of slack and forgiveness and love and generosity to get through all of that. Because they are the only things that offer us a genuine way out. Every other way is pretending. And there really is no other way around that.

I've really probably taken a lot of things too much to heart, instead of not enough. It's important to be responsible for our mistakes. But there are limits to that even, as there are with anything in life. At some point, either we accept one another for our limitations and we all share the responsibility for forgiving one another our mistakes, or we all get drug down a little, but particularly those who don't forgive.

And my experience is that those who forgive the least usually have the most to be forgiven for. Hamas comes to mind, here. As does Al Queda. And Fidel Castro. And Kim Jong Il. Hitler had an unforgiving soul. And he clearly had the most that needed forgiving.

Either we offer it and make the better choice and forgive or we don't. And either way, we live with the consequences of our choices. Virtues aren't virtues for no reason. And if you ever have any questions about that, practice a vice for awhile, until you figure out what a hole it leaves in your life. In fact, it's because of vices like bitterness and cynicism and hatefulness that we need virtues like forgiveness and generosity and love. Because we just couldn't make things right or better in life without the virtues like forgiveness and love that make life decent and good.

And the only person who really can forgive us our sins and trespasses and mistakes that we will ever have any control over, for real, is ourselves. So we can offer ourselves as much slack and forgiveness as we need. Because we all need plenty.

Love,
Ben