In the Pennsylvania government, the prosecutor’s office represents the state in each of the federal judicial districts. The District Attorneys and Attorney Generals are vested with the power to represent “we the people” on behalf of the commonwealth’s interest. Before becoming an elected official, they begin kicking the political football campaign by using their propaganda machine to influence the votes of “the people” with the promise of protecting the victims of crime, and safeguard the actually innocent from wrongful conviction. The D.A. and Attorney General’s office are sworn to “search for the truth” during every trial — not just obtain an outright conviction.
There are three concepts of truth: 1. Agreement of thought and reality; 2. Eventual verification; and 3. Consistency of thought with itself. Most D.A.s and Atty. Generals fail to “seek the truth” in accordance with both the spirit and letter of the law. If you think the truth doesn’t matter, think again. When one’s life is in the hands of an authority figure you can only hope this elected official is vested in, and stands firm in, the truth. Otherwise, you can end up being the next unsuspecting victim subjected to our fractured judicial system, represented by these empty suits who decline to adhere to the oath they were sworn to uphold with integrity in every trial.
On the other hand, every elected official will be confronted with the dilemma of choosing to either “seek the truth” and thus commit political suicide, or manipulate and misrepresent the facts to seek a wrongful conviction to secure their political careers. They must choose to stand for the unpopular notion of being on the side of truth or choose popularity and untruth. This question remains unanswered, and will only become clear once the elected official has taken office. Then, the people will get to know where this elected official stands when it comes to searching for the truth during his tenure performing his elected duties.
This reminds me of the old adage “The lie travels halfway around the world before the truth puts on its shoes.” It is unconscionable that there are so many citizens that have been wrongly imprisoned for years, especially, when one day spent in prison for a gross miscarriage of justice is one day that can potentially be their last. How many more actually innocent citizens wrongfully convicted will it take before the taxpayers and politicians will initiate the proper legislation to make the necessary changes to our fractured criminal justice system and hold the D.A.s and Atty. Generals accountable for their failure to live up to their sworn oaths to search for the truth in every trial?
In the article featured in the Socialist Viewpoint entitled:”Our Broken Judicial System,” written by Lorenzo “Cat” Johnson, (Vol. 15, No. 6, pp 72-73), he highlights a grim history that is replete with the outrageous number of 125 wrongfully convicted men and women who were formally exonerated in the nation, up to the year of 2014. The record further substantiates the Prosecutors’ and Attorney Generals’ egregious practice of failing to seek the truth to prevent the actually innocent from suffering a gross miscarriage of justice. Our broken judicial system continues to rear its ugly head by wrongfully imprisoning innocent people who, years later, are found to be innocent and are finally released. There is a timely quote by the late Senator Barry Goldwater (1909-1998) about this: “Now those who seek absolute power even though they seek it to do what they regard as good are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven and earth, and let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny.” It is frightening to know that our lives are subjected to these elected officials who are sworn to uphold their oath to seek the truth at all cost, but refuse to do so. Historically, these elected officials have obviously engaged in misrepresenting the truth by twisting the laws to trap taxpaying citizens, to pad their resume with convictions of innocent victims. Do our lives really matter to these elected officials?
The voice and face inside the nation of prisoners, Bryant Arroyo.
