|
 |
|
| |
Who killed justice? |
|
|
| |
|
| 07/12/2007 |
|
|
|
Former Milan attorney Gherardo Colombo and the newest recipient of the Raymond Chandler Award, Scott Turow, held an in-depth discussion on justice at Courmayeur’s Centro Congressi today, moderated by Gaetano Savatteri. While these two men of law and letters seemingly come from vastly different worlds, they nevertheless share several professional aspects, as Savatteri pointed out during the opening of the encounter “Who killed justice?”
Both Colombo and Turow were prosecutors in the past, although the former recently stepped down from the bench and the latter is currently a defense lawyer. Among his many activities today, Colombo is also vice president of the Garzanti publishing company. The bestselling author of Presumed Innocent, among others, Turow is perhaps better known for his crime novels than for a legal career during which he has been one of the foremost prosecutors of corruption in his home state of Illinois, as well as on the frontlines against capital punishment.
The issues discussed were undoubtedly complex, yet Turow and Colombo did not shy away from Savatteri’s questions, nor from those of the jam-packed audience, which also included high school students. The organizers’ intent was to interrogate the two on questions of legality, today’s most pressing issues and, naturally, the death penalty. In other words, on the system of rules and values that govern, or should govern, civil life.
Turow the talk more in the role of the writer than lawyer, emphasizing his need to identify with all his characters, and above all with the accused, as takes place in the opening lines of Presumed Innocent, in which the main character imagines his relationship with the defendant. A recurring theme for Turow, he also quickly made reference to Italy – not its fiction but its daily realities. Realities in which, explains Colombo, “the relationship between citizens and the accused varies according to the name of the accused and media’s interests. This form of saturation can transform trials into something that lies outside the rigorous nature of a trial, if we refer to court cases of corruption involving politicians and businessmen who can use their power to trigger a revolution. Or, on the contrary, of who, guilty or innocent, must struggle with very different treatment, such as for example the case in Perugia, to name a recent news event.”
Another issue that was broached, which touches us all, was the fear of going after the powerful. “As a young prosecutor,” said Turow, “I found myself trying important figures, which always made me think of what Machiavelli said: ‘If you shoot at the king, you must kill the king.’ This is certainly a daunting situation. However, in the United States as in Italy, we must hold to the ideals of carrying out justice without fear and without hope.”
This central and structural point that regards an entire system, and not just justice, says Colombo, must remain a means to regulate society. “Justice cannot and must not remain relegated to the courtroom,” he insists. “Each individual must take responsibility for him and herself. Only in this way can we get beyond the crisis in the value system that plagues our country. Justice depends on a sense of justice. If corruption is seen as a widespread and accepted system of unwritten rules that nonetheless are law, justice can do very little.” Yet after an adolescent student asked advice for the future, Colombo stated he was anything but pessimistic, “as long as we arrive at a system in which all individuals can be treated with equal dignity.”
When the discussion turned to capital punishment Turow explained that, “when Europeans judge the United States, and ask how such an evolved civilization can accept such barbaric punishment, they must evaluate aspects that profoundly separate the two continents. In the United States, people have very easy access to arms and, consequently, there is a murder rate that is fives time Western Europe’s. Fear reigns, so it shouldn’t be so surprising that there is vast consensus of the death penalty.” The rational argument comes from a man decidedly against the death penalty not necessarily on ideological or moral grounds, but first and foremost for strictly logical and sociological reasons – the profoundly unequal treatment of various defendants, based on skin color, social class and the kind of defense the accused can procure for themselves.
“Unlike Europeans,” added Turow, “Americans are not generally interested in what happens outside the United States. And they’re positively cheerful about the ability of their democracy to not be tainted by corruption and to prevail. Despite everything that’s happened in recent years with a president that was impeached and another elected in the courts rather than by the citizens. Our convictions are based on a different history. Our land was never devastated by invaders as Europe was in the two world wars.”
Europe and the United States: two realities both close to and far away from one another. Nevertheless, the lessons of Colombo and Turow are clear: if we think of justice, we must think of the world in terms of everything that happens within and around us. |
|
 |
|
|
|
| link |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
