Contributor Burt Prelutsky Scriptwriter Burt Prelutsky has writing credits from some of television’s best known series as well as having been a humor columnist for the L.A. Times and a movie critic for Los Angeles magazine. [go to Prelutsky index]

Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco by Burt Prelutsky

I, on the other hand, am about to admit something that will rub a lot of people the   way that steel wool rubs pewter.  I confess that I never presume that anybody who’s been   arrested and indicted is innocent.  While I realize that some of them are, that the eye   witness made a mistake or the cops nabbed the wrong guy or the D.A. was overzealous,   my assumption is that the mug on trial is as guilty as sin.

Although I understand that our legal system is based on the presumption of   innocence and the notion that every person, however vile his history, is entitled to the   best defense his money can buy, I can’t help believing that he wouldn’t be in hot water if   he hadn’t committed the crime.

What’s more, I don’t stop thinking he’s guilty just because twelve goofballs got   flimflammed by some fast-talking shyster, and wound up handing him a Get Out of Jail   Free card.  Furthermore, I’ll go so far as to say that, whatever folks may say to the   contrary, most of you feel the same way.

As we all saw in the O.J. Simpson case, even the term “a jury of his peers” has been turned on its head.  Whatever it may have meant in the past, in our silly age it has   come to mean that blacks have to be well-represented on a jury trying a black celebrity,   even if he happens to be a wealthy ex-jock who has spent most of his adult life chasing   blondes, and has nothing in common with those fans sitting in the jury box aside from   pigmentation.

Those who insist that we mustn’t ever presume guilt inevitably commandeer the   moral high ground.  It just sounds so nice, this presumption of innocence, so highly   principled, so doggone American.  The problem is that once you cut through the   malarkey, what it really is, is laughable.

Do you presume Hitler was innocent?  Or Idi Amin?  How about Stalin?  Pol Pot?     Why not?  Not one of them has ever been found guilty in a courtroom by a jury of his   peers.

To believe that we must presume these butchers were therefore innocent makes   you a fool.  Wishing you’d had the opportunity to plead their case makes you something   even worse.  It makes you an ACLU lawyer! CRO

Copyright 2006 Burt Prelutsky