When crossing the street became criminal

Way back in the day when for a few months I first gave writing a blog a bash, I wrote a post about an elderly British gentleman and his experience of being arrested (using what would not pass for reasonable force in a British court) and his subsequent experience of the American criminal justice system.

His experience came to mind last month, in the much reported case of an elderly Chinese man who was again subjected to what would appear to be an unreasonable use of force by the NYPD during his arrest.

In both cases the men were arrested for the uniquely American crime of jaywalking.  I asked on Facebook at the time why was jaywalking an issue for American police.  A friend (hi Carm!) came back with the not unreasonable suggestion that:

Amanda Knox and a Broken Justice System

I got really annoyed on Thursday evening, when I read a comment on CNN in an article entitled 'Amanda Knox retrial verdict: Six things to know'.

Firstly, why was she back on trial?  Fair enough, that's a question the answer to which anyone interested in the verdict should know.  Second up:

Had I been eating cornflakes I would have choked on them.  "Renewed questions about the effectiveness of Italy's justice system"?  Here is a line that (if it wasn't) might as well have been lifted directly out of a release from Amanda Knox's well-funded PR machine.


Compare and contrast with its coverage of the execution of Troy Davis, a man put to death in Georgia despite the fact that most of the original prosecution witnesses had subsequently retracted their testimony, alleging they were put under pressure to testify by the police and the DA.