In response to Ben Hartnell’s letter (“Bush is winner in lengthy series,” SN 11/20), I have to say I hope to expect more out of my future children’s history teachers than what Hartnell displayed in his very inaccurate and entirely negative portrayal of the U.S. court system. Hartnell apparently does not realize that the United States has a system of very precise laws set up in order to protect its citizens from excessive abuse of power on the part of the government. This point can be proven through using his own arguments.

Initially, let’s take a look at Hartnell’s argument of the court’s inability to prosecute a criminal in a case where no search warrant is made. In this case, the reason the Constitution mandates (through the Bill of Rights) a search warrant is so that an officer of the law cannot abuse his or her authority to search a residence, person or property without a set reason. Without this fundamental legal right, you could be strip-searched while walking down the street because you gave a dirty look to an officer, or if your face happens to be a different color than his or hers, or for any of a thousand completely subjective reasons.

Now, I am not saying that abuse of authority will run rampant without this part of our Constitution in place, but the potential does exist. The potential of abuse is in itself enough of a reason to mandate the right. This same argument holds true in response to Hartnell’s O.J. Simpson argument as well.

In this case, a man was allowed to go free because of the prosecution’s inexcusable shortsightedness of seeing if the glove fit before it had the defendant put it on his hand. But, what if it really didn’t fit? What if he was innocent? Well, if it were me and I was the innocent one, I wouldn’t want to have to go to jail because a glove might or might not have fit me.

Although the law enforcement agencies and prosecuting attorneys of our nation bear a heavy burden in order to show guilt, they bear this burden doing good for the public, which is why these “technicalities” were put in place. Every day, mistakes are made, and guilty people walk free. But I would rather see three potential criminals let go than one innocent go to jail, because if we lose one innocent because his or her rights were stripped from him or her, then it destroys the integrity and inherent righteousness of our system as a whole.

Our society and founding fathers created a system which ensures that these power-wielding individuals, such as police officers, play by the rules at all times. And isn’t playing by the rules what the good guys are supposed to do anyway? That was what I was always taught as a child.

Maybe Hartnell is right that Texas Gov. George W. Bush should win the presidency, but we have a system of courts set up to deal with these matters effectively as well as efficiently. Let’s let the professionals who do this by the book and by all of the “technical” rules decide this, and not the “history interns” of this great nation.

All I can do is just hope that when I have children, they are taught by someone other than Hartnell, because I would like to have them taught that the good guys who play by the rules, the guys who deserve to win, win. It is the technicalities that I want taught to my child, because those are what are going to end up making him or her the good person I know he or she will be.

Raymonde Wert
political theory
constitutional democracy senior