Murdering Justitia: A Shakespearean Tragedy

Reflecting on nearly four decades from the front lines and the perversion of justice

Last week, I officially finished my career as an active, credentialed investigator of over 38 years. From a courtroom witness stand, I provided testimony in my last open case that began almost four years ago.

As I walked up the steps into the courthouse, I reflected on the first time I testified in my role as an investigator. It was a cold December day in 1987, exactly thirty-eight years ago almost to the day, at this very courthouse. Since then, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve provided my testimony. Different courthouses and different courtrooms across three states, but the same, ever-present feeling of formality in venues supposedly dedicated to dispensing justice on behalf of the citizens of our Republic. Recalling that cold day in 1987, I believed I would make a difference. I walked in full of hope, inexperienced and naïve. Last week, I walked out a different man.

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

The marble floors, walls, ornate fixtures, and dark hardwood chairs and benches have changed little, if at all, over the years. Looking around, I suddenly became immersed in the memories of the prosecutors, judges, attorneys, bailiffs and other court staff I’ve encountered, many who’ve moved on or passed away during those years. Their faces flashed before me, like scenes replayed in monochrome, along with a seemingly unending parade of jurors, their faces now obscured by the passage of time.

The sounds of formal proceedings within those walls echoed deep within my mind. A call to order, the sound of a judge’s gavel, whispers and murmurs, verdicts read, sentences delivered— impacting the emotions and lives of most everyone present. From mundane to life-changing, almost forty years of memories. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Too little of the former, too much of the latter.

Back at my office, my reflection turned to what we’ve become. Not just in my hometown, but across the nation. The changes I’ve seen, even in my relatively short time as an insignificant bit player within this system, have been dramatic.

If this were a Shakespearean tragedy, Justitia, more commonly known as Lady Justice, the symbol of American jurisprudence, might be the star. As the play approached its final acts, Justitia would appear close to death. Not a natural death, but the result of a slow and painful torture. A true Shakespearian tragedy.

She would appear in the opening scene, a beautiful woman blindfolded and attired in a flowing robe, holding balanced scales with her left hand and a sword with her right. Billed as a righteous and wholesome protagonist scripted by the moral founders of a nation, uplifted to depict equality, integrity and virtue; while standing as a vanguard for truth, she would be progressively victimized by an evil cast of characters.

In the early acts of this Shakespearean tragedy, those lawless and morally bankrupt characters would strip her of her blindfold, and burden her scales with weights of graft, libertinage, and corruption. Act after act, a surprised cast and horrified audience would bear witness to the attacks against Justitia; the cast choosing to ignore the deviations from the script, while the audience opts for the comfort of their seats rather than interrupting the play. After all, silence and pretending that everything is normal is safer and easier than causing a disturbance.

Following intermission, the evil cast of characters would rip the weighted scales from Justitia, mocking her and other cast members while taunting the audience. They would then forcefully pull her blindfold down around her neck, fashioning it into a makeshift noose, while dulling and bending her sword, rendering it useless. Still, the humiliation would not yet be sufficient, and the evil cast of characters would remain unsated.

Before the curtain would fall on the closing acts, the evil antagonists would rip away her robe in an unsatiated frenzy, alarming cast members and propelling the audience into a voyeuristic, trauma-based trance. Objections voiced by other cast members and from the audience would be relentlessly mocked with personal ridicule. The evil cast of characters would appear to thrive on the reactions of those who were not clued in to this deviation from the script. Energized by the palpable and paralyzing fear they were causing, the antagonists would proceed further than perhaps even their director expected.

As the curtain opened in the next-to-the-last scene, the evil cast would improvise for yet another humiliation of Lady Justice. They would shred her robe and rip the flowing garment from her perfect female form. They would temporarily block the audience from viewing her and use stage props for their final insult.

The evil cast members would step aside to display Justitia not as a Lady, but as a transsexual mutation of her true self. They would not only mutilate Lady Justice until she became unrecognizable but would forcibly attempt to convince the unsuspecting cast and audience members that this perversion is, and always been, normal. They would be satisfied, at least in this near final act, in their dehumanization and debasement of God’s beautiful creation. They would consider it a bonus, an extra scene perhaps, beyond their destruction of everything Lady Justice once represented and intended to preserve.

If this indeed was written as a Shakespearean tragedy, the final act of the play would be upon us. The evil cast of characters, perhaps themselves surprised at the lack of resistance from the other cast, crew, and audience, would laugh in demonic delight. Empowered by a general apathy, their boldness would increase, as would the intensity of their attacks against the unwitting or unwilling. Scriptwriters for the evil cast would further revise the final scene, omitting any need for a compliant audience or consensual agreement of historically accepted norms. Morality, righteousness, and even rationality would become distant whisps of memory. Evil would be celebrated and good would be condemned. Rational thought would become a hostile act, and the framework of justice forever lost.

While reflecting on the four decades I spent as an investigator— an effective one, my recollections of granite buildings and official proceedings morphed into something else entirely. Like slides on a projector’s carousel, those scenes were replaced by the faces and bodies of victims who were silenced by unspeakable acts of evil at the hands of others. The faces of their families and loved ones whose lives have been ripped apart, and the haunting sights and muted sounds of their grief— will they find any earthly closure in a system where Justitia, the guardian of justice, has been defiled and perverted by a still-present and evolving evil cast of characters?

Within my introspection, I realized that fully retreating from the fight would be akin to squandering the last forty years of my professional life. A change of course, perhaps, but not a retreat. I will never retreat.

We all have something to contribute before the curtain descends on the final act of this real-life Shakespearean tragedy. For the sake of justice, Lady Justice, and for the future of our children and our nation, it is required of us. We must fight with Godly righteousness against the increasing oppression of evil. Anything less would be unconscionable.

Prepare. Pray. Above all, act.