Review of Color of Justice

Something is rotten in the kingdom of Denmark, and in the USA. When justice takes into account the race of the defendant or of the victim it is no longer justice but discrimination, positive for some and negative for the others, and this fake shape of so-called justice creates resentment and unbalance and more violence and crime. Justice cannot be played like a game of poker and use the media and the street to build up a case. The case must be built on real facts and on the basis of good police and prosecution work and all the necessary means must be provided to the defense to build up their side of the case. This film also deals with the problem of the age of the criminals, juvenile or not juvenile. The main mistake in this case is that the police work was not done the way it should have been done. The result is a messy case with Miranda looming high where it should not. The Miranda articles should provide the defendant with protection against bad police work, but also the prosecution with the guarantee that everything has been done properly. In this case justice did not have a chance to discriminate between the real killer, the one who killed the victim, and the others who did not assist him but witnessed his crime without being able to stop him or even say a word against him because he was overwhelming their moral sense or just plain good sense, and that lack of reaction might have been interpreted by him as encouragement. Justice is not the place where social cases are supposed to be solved. Justice is not the place where historical injustice can be solved. Justice should take into account all circumstances but the circumstances of a crime should not erase the crime, and a juvenile delinquent who has repeatedly had a criminal behavior should know his crimes are making him of age for adult justice. The only point is to know whether the repeated criminal attitude has to concern the same crime or type of crime or can concern any crime at all. In this particular case in the film the main delinquent was committing a blood crime for the first time. He could not be considered as a repeating criminal, except if robbery or street violence qualify the same as killing a person with armed violence. In other words this film shows perfectly well how a case is perverted by the prosecution from the very start: it becomes a political issue and no longer a judicial case. It becomes then, for the defense, a racial situation and no longer a judicial case. Then the case is rigged and a by-passing relative of the victim will have to commit a crime to try and get some justice but will fail to kill the real culprit because that kind of "a-tooth-for-a-tooth" justice is always blind. But the system sure is responsible for that situation. A few parameters have to be redefined when juvenile crime is becoming a bloody and daily activity, or should I say, entertainment or pastime? Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne