Dear Editor,
Amidst all the rhetoric over the new Supreme Court judge, Ketanji Jackson, I’ve become disheartened to find so many of my fellow Americans don’t seem to have a grasp on “due process.” Due process refers to the idea before a person can be convicted of a crime, their guilt must be proven beyond all reasonable doubt.
The actual “process” part is often glossed over by power hungry prosecutors, tired judges and overworked public defenders. What’s more, the accused often sit in county detention for so long that they jump at the first plea bargain thrown at them – an inherently corrupt idea itself.
Now, back to Ketanji Jackson: What exactly do people loathe about her so much? The fact that she defended people accused of a crime? Whether or not her clients were ultimately found guilty is irrelevant to the fact that she had a job to do. That job was to facilitate criminal defendants’ right to due process. It was not up to her to sentence them, nor was she allowed to voice a personal opinion on her clients. Regardless of the indvidual or the circumstances, her job was to give people a fighting chance to defend themselves in a court of law… which again, is a fundamental right of all citizens of the United States.
I urge people to end the childish namecalling and overzealous use of their OPINIONS as their “argument” or “logic.” Jackson’s former role as a defense attorney may say a lot of things about her… but to say she “fawns over child molestors” (as Jose Bustos poetically stated last week) takes quite a stretch of the imagination, and frankly, says more about Mr. Bustos than anything.
Casey Mackey
Billings, MT
