I am contemplating the price at which we are willing to abandon our principles. Last week, President Barack Obama renewed his 2009 pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and the U.S. Supreme Court held, in Boyer v. Louisiana, that the delay caused by the failure to fund counsel for an indigent death penalty defendant for five years did not violate his right to a speedy trial. These two seemingly-unconnected events have more in common than coincidental timing: Each is evidence that America has surrendered an essential part of itself in the name of fiscal austerity and administrative convenience.
It is a fundamental component of our constitutional character that we treat the bad better than we may want to and better than they may deserve. This self-imposed restriction is the natural outgrowth of John Adams’ famous maxim that it is better for innocence to be protected than for guilt to be punished. Thus, the Bill of Rights not only bars much that was common to earlier brands of justice compelled confessions, cruel punishments but also compels us to assist in the defense of those we may despise. Not merely because accusation is not proof of guilt (though that is important), but also because, to put a slight twist on Dostoyevsky, we measure ourselves by how we treat those we want to imprison.
