Twelve men good and true
Juries, judiciaries and felons
“It’s a long and winding road for Epic. The firm lost the Apple case, which is on appeal, but got the Google case to a jury.” (Matt Stoller: BIG Newsletter, 12 December 2023.)
Matt Stoller is a respected blogger who discusses competition law matters, and this quote is from a recent blog post in which he describes a victory for a firm named Epic against another company, called Google. He, in part at least, ascribes Epic’s victory (thus far; the decision is to be appealed) to its having secured a judgment by a jury—once described as constituted by twelve men good and true.
Not everybody gets to pop into a court of law to see a jury trial, so not everyone knows what a jury looks like. Here’s one:
Image: The Jury, by John Morgan (By John Morgan - The Jury by John Morgan.jpg in Wikipedia (English), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4912282).
As you can see, although the clothing betrays the fact that these twelve men good and true date from 1861, one of them could otherwise be seen as holding a mobile device, which another member is offering advice on. The fellow next to him could perhaps be having a phone conversation. Luckily, these things are no longer allowed in modern courts of law.
The chap second left on the front row can’t hear the guy sitting next to him, let alone the witness. The chap first left, back row, however, can, and is most intrigued. Second left, back row, looks a little like a second-hand car dealer, except there were no cars in 1861. Whilst, in one of her films, actress Margaret Rutherford was pulled up as a jury member for knitting whilst attending to the court’s matters (it helped her concentrate, she said), there could perhaps be a view that this particular jury would aptly fit the description of a motley crew.
While jury trial can be dated back to, certainly, ancient Greece, with their dikastaí (up to 1,501 of them in a jury), followed by ancient Rome, with their comitias of but 100, the founding document on which the modern common-law jury is based is generally taken to be Magna Carta, and its article 39 (translated):
No free man shall be captured, and or imprisoned, or disseised of his freehold, and or of his liberties, or of his free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we proceed against him by force or proceed against him by arms, but by the lawful judgment of his peers, and or by the law of the land.
Since Greek and Roman times, the number of jury members had by 1215 reduced (from 1,501, or 100, to 12). Twelve is the figure in equivalent procedures in Islamic law; it was the number under the Rhenish provinces in the 18th century; under Æthelred the Unready in England in the 10th; and under Henry II of England in the 12th.
Comparing a jury to a motley crew is not a disparagement. In many ways, it is the precise point. Lawyers are generally forbidden from acting as jury members. They know too much about the law. There must be a certain naivety to a juror. But, that said (other than in grand juries), the role of the modern juror is not to judge the law, but to find the facts.
To a large degree, the jury is a nebulous fiction, and the philosophy underlying what a jury is, what it is composed of, what its task is, and its prevalence within the legal system has never truly been settled, and still isn’t, for jury members are very variable creatures across the breadth of this globe of ours. Judges, however, are not. Judges get appointed by the state, to execute the state’s justice, and, since it is the state that enacts the laws that its judges judge, and whilst some states instruct their judges to exercise more (or less) judgment in the judgments they hand down, there can ultimately be no disputing the fact that, however just or unjust justice is when imposed by the judiciary, provided the judge acts in accordance with the state’s prescript, then that is the state’s justice.
What makes juries a nebulous fiction is the fact that they are so central to many procedures in some countries and are utterly absent in others. On the whole, even in the common law countries, where they are commonest (albeit some have abandoned them as being susceptible to bias—e.g., Singapore, India, Pakistan, Malaysia), they tend to be restricted only to criminal trials, and not civil actions. The USA differs in this (for instance, to cite a notorious case of recent date, the Carroll I and II trials are instances of civil jury trials).
Out of this then arise some interesting questions to ponder:
Are juries indeed susceptible to bias?
If so, why do some countries use them?
If not, why are they not used for all trials, civil and criminal, in all instances?
Why “12” members? Why not 1,501, as in ancient Greece? Why not 15, as in Scotland?
Why were women excluded for serving on juries for so long? Because they cannot judge facts? Or because they could so easily be cowed? Not so much susceptible to bias as susceptible to duress?
If juries are indeed susceptible to bias, aren’t judges also susceptible to bias?
How can one justify a jury system under which the jurors (who may or may not be susceptible to bias or duress) determine the facts, and the judge passes sentence, but with his or her hands bound by the strictures of the statute? What, then is the role of the judge, except as a master of ceremonies?
This last question is a thorny one and concerns offences for which a judge has no discretion in sentencing, such as in cases of felony murder.
Felony murder is a crime, a serious crime, that, in some jurisdictions carries a penalty of death, and in many, life imprisonment. So, what is felony murder?
In Saudi Arabia, let’s say a western businessman arrives at Riyadh airport and hails a taxi in order to drive to his hotel in the town. On the road, the taxi is involved in an accident. Under Saudi law, the accident is the responsibility, not of either of the two drivers, but of the man sitting on the back seat of the taxi. Thus it was at least explained to me by somebody who lived in Riyadh. Under Saudi law, there is a causal connection between the accident and, not the mistake that one of the drivers may have made but the fact of the businessman landing at Riyadh airport and wanting to transfer to his hotel. That is the causal connection and that may seem tenuous to many, but it is not regarded as tenuous under the laws of the Kingdom.
Sorry, we were talking about felony murder, but the same sort of thinking, which may be dismissed, perchance, by western readers who fail to appreciate the finer points of Sharia law, actually prevails in respect of the taking of lives in western countries.
You can take the lives of others in a number of ways, some of which are classified as criminal acts and some of which are not. If we start at the top and work our way to the bottom, we find a ladder with many rungs, but the essential ones are as follows.
First-degree murder or murder with malice aforethought: the terminologies change from one jurisdiction to another, but this is the intentional killing of somebody, who need not be identified to the culprit, but done by targeting the victim or by acting so wantonly as to be insouciant as to the result of the act. The act will generally be one of extreme violence, such as discharging a firearm or wielding a knife. 9/11 was an instance of first-degree murder, as was the Uvalde shooting at Robb Elementary School, as were the crimes of Jack the Ripper, and the Moors Murderers, and Marc Dutroux. These were all cases of first-degree murder.
Manslaughter or culpable homicide: again, the terms vary but this is a lesser charge. The culprit causes death through an act that is not intended to cause death. Note that phrase: not intended. Manslaughter can entail a punishment equally as great as murder (e.g., life imprisonment), but the culpability—blameworthiness—attributed to the culprit is less. If murder is committed with malice aforethought, then the fact that manslaughter might be committed with malice in the heat of the moment is enough to reduce the degree of culpability. Manslaughter is indeed sometimes called second-degree murder. From jurisdiction to jurisdiction, the criteria vary as to what is murder and what is manslaughter. And that is strange, because, whilst there is little discussion as to what murder is, there is no clear-cut definition of what murder isn’t. Crimes of passion, provocation (even over years), intention to harm, but short of killing: these are all means of distinguishing some cases from others but, whilst set down in legal doctrines and jurisprudence, they amount less to deep-set principles and more to tools of policy.
Any criminal act that does not qualify as a statutory offence requires two elements: the material element (or actus reus) and the intentional element (mens rea). In short: the accused must have done what they’re accused of, and must have intended to do what they did. It is the degree of intention that distinguishes a murder from an act of manslaughter.
Culpable omission is, as the name says, not an act. It is still a criminal offence, but instead of doing something, the culprit refrains from doing something: they commit an omission. Watching somebody drown is culpable omission. The very least that laws against culpable omission require is to call for help.
There is a legend about a little Dutch boy who finds a hole in the dyke. He realises, being a good Dutchman, that, if the flow of water through the dyke is not stopped, it will become a flood. He inserts his finger into the hole to stop the flow of water, and the flow of water thereby stops. But now he is in a double bind: if he removes his finger, the dyke will break, and people will drown. But he needs to remove his finger in order to go and get help. Most reasonable people would say that the boy is not culpable if he removes his finger and runs as fast as he can to fetch help. If the dyke breaks meantime, that is not his fault. He did nothing to make the dyke break. But, what if he doesn’t run, but saunters? What if he doesn’t cry out, but waits until he gets home and mentions casually to his father, “By the way, the dyke is about to break”? If he does nothing to make the dyke break, then nothing in his subsequent actions can heap any culpability upon him, surely? Well, the law is not always that simple.
Suppose you are at a party and you disappear into the bathroom for ten minutes to …do whatever you do in bathrooms. When you emerge from the bathroom, you return to the party and find that there is no one there. Around the room are half-drunk glasses of wine and whatever, cigarettes burn in ashtrays, but the room is otherwise empty. You pour yourself some wine and sit, enjoying the sudden silence. You even smoke a cigarette (if you smoke, that is). Presently, you become curious. You stub out your cigarette and mosey through the house until you find a room which is crowded with the party-goers. They are huddled around an office chair on which is propped one of the company. You ask, “Is everything all right?” and somebody replies, “This chap has had a bit of a turn,” indicating the chap on the office chair. You approach and feel for his pulse in his wrist. There isn’t one. You feel for his pulse in his jugular vein in his neck. There isn’t one. You commandeer three others and each of you takes a limb and carries the man out of the crowded room back into the empty area, and place him on the floor, where, immediately and without hesitation, you and a person who is a professional nurse, commence performing mouth-to-mouth (or cardiopulmonary) resuscitation. The man who had the turn does not respond, but you continue your efforts for 20 minutes, unabated.
When the police arrive, they charge you with culpable omission. Because you didn’t telephone them earlier. You explain to them that you don’t have a mobile phone on you. That you were occupied with trying to save the victim’s life. Nevertheless, you stand trial for causing the man’s death by doing nothing, during which time you were trying to save his life. Now, here’s the question: are you guilty or innocent?
Does it matter that you’re not trained in CPR? Does it matter that the other person was a nurse, who is trained in CPR? Does it matter that you were unaware of the emergency for a full 20 minutes before you got involved? Does it matter that you took immediate action to try to save the man’s life? What if, instead of pouring a wine and sitting for ten minutes, you had simply put your coat on and left? And what if you had realised there was a dead man in the next room and then put your coat on and left? Do you need to prove that the man was dead before you tried to save him/didn’t call the police? Does the prosecution need to prove he was alive? Or does the prosecution simply need to allege that you didn’t do anything (even if you did)?
Whatever the prosecution simply or not-so-simply needs to do, there is nothing simple about culpable omission. It is a crime whose commission lies essentially in not crying “help!” You can stand and watch a man burn to death, you can even laugh in his face as he does so, but as long as you ring the fire brigade, you are innocent of the crime of culpable omission. But, if you discover someone who has had a turn, and try for 20 minutes to resuscitate him, you can be charged with culpable omission for not calling the police. Even if ten other people are there, who could have done so.
Is that it, then? The ways to cause death? Well, no. There is also felony murder. It is a crime that is born of the common law systems, but has long since been abolished in the country where the common law originated: England (and Wales). Felony murder is where you engage in an act that is a felony (that’s a serious crime, US terminology), usually involving violence, like breaking and entering, or discharging a firearm or driving recklessly, along with another person or other persons. If someone else causes a death in the course of the act, then all those participating in the act are guilty of causing the death. It is classed as first-degree murder and is charged as felony murder, to bring it within a range of statutes—pretty much all in the US—that require the judge to hand down a sentence of life imprisonment or, indeed, death.
THE CASE OF DEREK WILLIAM BENTLEY
Felony murder was abolished in England & Wales owing in part to a case prosecuted in 1952. The post-war era in the UK was in some ways idyllic (prime minister Harold Macmillan famously told Britons in 1957, “You’ve never had it so good”, perhaps prompted by his government’s abolition of … felony murder); but, in other ways, it was a fraught period, in which social unrest was never far away. Wartime rationing continued into the 1950s, cities were marked by gap sites as a result of wartime bombing; youths divided into mods and rockers, and gangs of Lambretta riders confronted gangs of leather-jacket wearers. It was the age of Rebel Without A Cause (James Dean, 1955) and, in 1950, the film director Basil Dearden made a movie that would launch a new star into British cinema big time, and give rise to a beloved British TV series. The series was Dixon of Dock Green, the actor was Dirk Bogarde, and the film was The Blue Lamp. Bogarde plays a hoodlum who acquires a firearm and decides to hold up a cinema at gunpoint, once the patrons are safely inside watching the big screen. Jack Warner, who reprised the role on TV, plays a beat policeman who sees the crime in flagrante delicto. He confronts Bogarde and demands that he hand over the weapon. Bogarde hesitates and then fires, killing the policeman.
Three years later, a similar scenario played out in reality. Derek Bentley was 19, and his accomplice, Christopher Craig, was 16. They were caught by a policeman whilst committing a burglary of a sweets warehouse. Craig held the gun. Bentley said to his accomplice, “Let him have it.”
We don’t know how that was said, or even if it was said (Bentley and Craig denied it was said). The defence argued that it could have meant “Give the policeman the gun;” the prosecution argued it meant “Shoot the policeman.” By the time this supposed instruction was given, there were numerous uniformed police officers on the roof of the sweet factory, where the drama was playing out. The fact that neither Craig nor Bentley recalled having said the words is in my view understandable—the stress levels were extremely high. If they were said, they cannot reasonably have been intended as an exhortation for the youths to fight their way to freedom. Nonetheless, the jury (remember them?) agreed that the words meant Shoot. Under the principle of felony murder, Craig and Bentley were therefore both guilty. Because Craig was only 16, he was sent to prison, for ten years, after which he went into plumbing. Bentley, on the other hand, even though he had not pulled the trigger, and despite an outcry pleading for clemency, was hanged by the neck as an adult, at age 19. The campaign to clear Bentley’s name continued after his execution and he was in fact later pardoned; ultimately, his conviction was even overturned.
A PLEA FOR CLEMENCY TURNED DOWN
The then Home Secretary, David Maxwell Fyfe, to whom an application had been made for clemency, but which was turned down, wrote in his memoire about how his decision was based on
the evidence of the trial, medical reports, family or other private circumstances ... and police reports, ... the available precedents, and ... public opinion.
He notably pointed to the fact the case involved the murder of a police officer, a comment reminiscent of the plot in Warner and Bogarde’s film The Blue Lamp, itself a comment on delinquent hoodlums gunning down upright upholders of the law. There is no special or aggravated crime of murdering a police officer in English law; murder is murder, whoever dies.
To take a parallel from another jurisdiction, however, there is, interestingly, a common misconception in Germany (and Austria) about the existence of a criminal offence Beamtenbeleidigung: insulting a civil servant. A Beleidigung, or insult, is a form of assault under their laws, but civil servants are not protected by any special provision of the criminal legislation, not any more so than any other citizen. It isn’t that civil servants are given greater protection under the law, it’s simply that it is felt that they should have greater protection (aside from details as to how a prosecution is raised and the degree to which prosecutors will proceed in the public interest).
Maxwell Fyfe furthermore pointed to public opinion, indicating, perhaps, a greater interest on his part in acceding to the views of the general public, as a politician, than in acceding to his duty of administering the law, as a minister of the Crown.
Finally, he stated that a reprieve would mean the Home Secretary is intervening in the due process of the law. In that, Mr Maxwell Fyfe was absolutely correct. That is exactly what a reprieve is. It is an intervention in the due process of law; and it is an intervention that is necessitated because the due process of law has procured an injustice. Maxwell Fyfe declined to correct the injustice wreaked upon Derek William Bentley. Mr Bentley had to pay with his life to get the felony murder doctrine abolished in English law, which followed but four years later.
Felony murder is a charge that needs careful consideration but, in one country where it survives to this day, it seemingly seldom gets that attention. If we take, for another instance, the circumstances of the shootings at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris, in November 2015, in which 90 persons were killed at the hands of three terrorists, it would not be necessary to identify which of the terrorists murdered which of the victims. They all shot indiscriminately at members of the audience at that venue, each with the same intent: to kill as many people as possible. Each was as guilty as the others in the deaths of all 90 murder victims. Felony murder is not, in those terms, an aspect of French law, and the culprits were all killed at the scene, but the situation would be analysed as a joint enterprise, which is another way of viewing felony murder. The Bataclan Theatre massacre is a clear and obvious case.
THE MISSISSIPPI CASE OF SADIK BAXTER AND O’BRIAN OAKLEY
Less obvious is the case of Sadik Baxter. Sadik and his buddy, O’Brian Oakley, had lost money gambling one night and decided to mosey around a well-to-do area of town to see what pickings were to be had from injudiciously unlocked cars. They found some sports equipment, some loose change and some sunglasses. The owner of the loose change and sunglasses noticed the act of theft and pursued Sadik in his car whilst his wife summoned the police, who arrived within two minutes. Baxter was arrested and handcuffed, Oakley fled in his car, was pursued (contrary to police protocols) in hot pursuit (inappropriate for a theft), and ran down two cyclists, killing them outright. Baxter and Oakley were charged with felony murder, and convicted. Because Oakley killed the cyclists—by error—whilst being chased by the sheriff in hot pursuit for a theft (which police aren’t supposed to do, only if there is immediate danger to the innocent), his accomplice, Baxter, was sent to prison for the rest of his life: for having stolen some loose change, a drum, some baseball equipment and a pair of sunglasses. At the time the cyclists died, he was several miles away, his wrists encased in handcuffs.
“Sadik …, while he would readily acknowledge the burglaries, he felt that he was innocent of murder, and couldn’t imagine that a jury of his peers would disagree.
From “Sentenced to Life for an Accident Miles Away” by Sarah Stillman.
Felony murder requires some degree of proximity to the act that causes the death. Baxter was not in the car that hit the cyclists. He was in handcuffs, which are a device designed to prevent the ability to commit murders. He admitted to the thefts. He was convicted of the murder. If we look at Saudi law and how it inculpates a passenger in a taxi that is involved in a road traffic accident, where does the link of causation end? What about the businessman’s firm, which sent him to Saudi Arabia? What about the founder of the company, who set up the business that sent the businessman to Saudi Arabia to do business? Would the businessman still be culpable if he just sat there, watching out of the window, or should he be engaged in conversation with the driver? Or does he need to reach forward and place his hands over the driver’s eyes?
He confessed to the thefts, hoping that the jury would value his willingness to take responsibility. When Sadik finished and returned to his seat, O’Brian Oakley’s attorney shook his head and said, “You dumbshit! You just convicted yourself.” It took the jury thirty-seven minutes to reach a verdict. On both counts, Sadik was guilty of first-degree murder.
From “Sentenced to Life for an Accident Miles Away” by Sarah Stillman.
What about Sadik’s proximity to the facts? Surely, with his hands cuffed, he could not then be deemed guilty of a murder (the felony part of the charge is dropped upon conviction, which is then for first-degree murder; remember, that is the same as murder with malice aforethought, but is a crime that takes no account of mens rea. The mens rea is deemed, by dint of the actions of someone else.) Would his conviction be more convincing if, at the moment at which Oakley struck the cyclists, Baxter’s hands had not been cuffed, even if he was several miles away at the time? Would it make a difference if, instead of being engaged in an act of theft, he’d been engaged in an act of attempted murder (of an entirely different party)?
Can you feel the waves of sympathy and the desire for recrimination swerving from right to left in your mind? If not, then you are even-minded. If so, then perhaps you’re like David Maxwell Fyfe, and more interested in public opinion than in injustices wreaked by the due process of law.
We could apply the Saudi principle to Baxter’s case. If, as they are instructed by protocols governing their work, the police had not hot-pursued Oakley, there is a good chance that the accident that killed the cyclists would not have occurred. Therefore, the police killed the cyclists. Or at least they had a role in the cyclists’ deaths, didn’t they? And, under the felony murder doctrine, that makes them fully liable in any case, and so the police should be sentenced to life imprisonment. Do you recall how I said above that juries are a nebulous fiction? Well, felony murder is now a nebulous fiction; and its non-application is likewise a fiction.
Before swearing in the jury, the judge offered Sadik a final chance to take a plea, and underlined the risk. “Jury instructions in this are pretty tough for a defendant,” he explained, and if Sadik were to be convicted he’d be forced to sentence him, under mandatory sentencing rules, to life in prison.
From “Sentenced to Life for an Accident Miles Away” by Sarah Stillman.
Sadik Baxter has taught himself law whilst in prison. He is said to know more about the crime of felony murder than most of the best criminal defenders in the entire country. He cannot conceive that he was convicted whilst in police custody in handcuffs. At one time, he was charged with four murders, even though only two cyclists died. That, he managed to get corrected (he was charged with felony murder and causing death by vehicular accident for each of the two victims).
But other factors militated against him. He is Black. He is poor. He stole from a rich person. The jury at his trial was shown photographs of the accident victims, their limbs torn from their bodies and strewn wildly across the road at the scene of the collision. Blood and gore have a certain influence on ordinary persons good and true. Juries are susceptible to bias, especially blood and gore. But juries are less even-minded when it comes to determining what or who caused the blood and gore. They have a regular tendency to associate the blood and gore in the photographs with the acts of the man in the dock, who, just to recall, was in handcuffs at the time this blood and gore was shed.
He tried arguing that he’d had ineffective representation, and that the sharing of sixty-nine “gruesome” photographs of the victims’ body parts and a bloody crime scene had biased the jury.
From “Sentenced to Life for an Accident Miles Away” by Sarah Stillman.
The jury that sat in the trial of Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, the self-confessed murderers of the 14-year-old Black schoolboy Emmett Till in Mississippi in the year 1955 (they stated so to a magazine reporter) was entirely white and entirely male; they acquitted the two accused of the murder that the men would later admit to. I cannot say to what extent the jurors were under duress, or manipulated by the defence; or to what extent they might have been biased. But, acquit they did.
Sadik Baxter wants to go to jury trial, because his manyfold applications to the courts have so often been denied as to bring him to the realisation that the judiciary in the USA can be as sympathetic to his plight as it wishes, but it will never relieve him of his imprisonment because it can’t: its hands are bound. What Sadik so wants is a retrial, in which he can challenge the jury to see a sense that I certainly do see and which perhaps you do as well: that a doctrine that sends a thief to prison for the rest of his life because of an accident that is caused by a third-party whilst being pursued by another third-party whilst his own hands are encased in handcuffs is iniquitous.
Of course, Sadik could win his application (he has been, at last, granted a certificate of appealability), but has no guarantee that the jury before which he would plead his case isn’t like the jury in the prosecution of Milam and Bryant: susceptible to bias, duress, or plain fear.
Advocates in favour of the felony murder charge point to its usefulness as a deterrent to drug dealers, especially in the wake of a wave of deaths due to fentanyl. But, with the prospect of life imprisonment advertised to them up front, the fear is that those cohorts who witness an overdose, like in the case of the guy at the party in the office chair, simply clear off, instead of calling for help. Perhaps that’s seen as an unfortunate but unintended consequence. Perhaps it’s seen as two birds with one stone. Now, anti-abortionists in the US want felony murder invoked where a mother-to-be seeks out an abortion, even in another state.
In 1971, a book was published concerning the case of Derek Bentley. Its title is To Encourage The Others and is an acknowledged allusion to Voltaire’s famous saying about killing admirals. The question that remains in modern America is whether felony murder is even well-known enough to act as a deterrent, to encourage or even discourage others; or whether it acts simply as a whitewash to culpability that lies elsewhere: in the Saudi case, with the driver of the taxi; in Baxter’s case, with the police, who ignored protocol to pursue a thief.
Had the Broward police in Sadik Baxter’s case but known it at the time, they were standing face to face with a much bigger thief anyway, and he was not in handcuffs. He was the guy whose wife had called the cops.
Bradley Kantor, who had called the police when Sadik stole the loose change and sunglasses from his car … [was later] arrested in a federal raid. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit forty-two million dollars’ worth of health-care fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He was sentenced to a decade in prison, and the government seized his multimillion-dollar home, his two Winnebagos, and his thirty-seven-foot yacht. … [W]e were looking at a parable of American sentencing: Sadik Baxter stole a few dollars, a drum set, some used baseball equipment, and a pair of sunglasses and got life, while Bradley Kantor stole millions and got ten years.
From “Sentenced to Life for an Accident Miles Away” by Sarah Stillman.
All of which brings me to the last category of causes of death. They’re the unheeded safety recommendations in transport, oil & gas, police procedures, profiteering by working workers to exhaustion, the Ford Pinto gas tank scandal, the pollution that is poured into waterways and oceans and into the air that surrounds us and, ultimately, the heedless stoking of climate warming, by corporate executives who are insouciant of warnings and susceptible to bias. There is no reason why felony murder could not be invoked in those cases as well; and there is every reason to suppose it never will be. Because felony murder is not a doctrine of law; it is a policy of social elimination.
If susceptibility to bias is enough to get a legal institution and a criminal charge swept from the statute book in some jurisdictions, why is it then not enough to get worldwide, global commercial practices reined in so as to not to pose a grave, clear and present danger to millions of those who co-exist on this planet?
If democracy is justice for all, Justice is peeking.