HAVING spent the past 42 years either behind bars or on the run after being framed and tortured by racist sheriff’s officers for a supermarket robbery that he did not commit, Robert Carroll Coney might be excused for railing against the system.
Yet, on being exonerated last week, the 76-year-old remained coolly philosophical and, against all odds, devoted to the American way of justice that let him down.
Rather than resort to anger, he had taken to heart the remarks of a judge who, many years before, told him to trust in the wisdom of the Constitution, saying: “He said: ‘That is what’s going to free you. It might not be today or tomorrow, but it works.’ ”
The judge might have fallen under the influence of Austin O’Malley, who declared: “All things come to him who waits: even justice.”
The words that Thomas Jefferson drafted and that the Founding Fathers turned into American holy writ remain inspiring to the vast majority of Americans, even when events appear to contradict their faith in them. Two guilty men confounded justice last week, when their lawyers bargained with prosecutors for lighter sentences.
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For Michael Gangas, captain of the Staten Island Ferry who was absent from the bridge when the ship careened into a dock, killing 11 passengers and slicing limbs off dozens of others, this meant freedom. Instead of going to jail for manslaughter, the captain, who at first refused to testify then, like Martha Stewart, lied to investigators, will serve a mere 200 hours’ community service.
Prosecutors are happy to excuse the guilty captain because they have their sights on his bosses, who failed to enforce a strict “two-pilot” rule that would have ensured that two senior seamen supervised every docking. More than that, the lawyer for the victims praised the deal because it will now be easier for him to prove high-level incompetence in the City of New York, which runs the service, thereby wresting millions of dollars in compensation for his clients.
Across the Hudson in New Jersey, Charles Kushner, the biggest financial backer of Tom McGreevey, the Governor — who shocked America by saying that he is gay and will resign his post — has agreed a deal that will reduce his prison sentence from ten years to no more than two. He admitted lying to investigators about political donations, filing false tax returns and, most bizarre of all, videotaping his brother-in-law, who was preparing to testify against him, having sex with a prostitute and sending the tape to his sister.
In the Kushner case, the reason for the plea-bargaining deal is to draw to a speedy close an expensive investigation leading to an elaborate trial. In this case, justice will not be seen to be done in order to spare taxpayers a needless expense.
Plea-bargaining is so common among rich defendants, who can afford the best lawyers and thereby make prosecution more difficult, that victims of the system such as Mr Coney, as well as those who believe that equal justice for all is a prerequisite for a fair society, might feel rightfully aggrieved. But justice in America, where lawyers infiltrate every layer of life and litigation is a commonplace, has become an elastic concept and has long been treated as something of a game.
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In the case of the Christie’s and Sotheby’s commission- fixing case, in which prosecutors were prepared to agree an immunity deal from either side in exchange for co-operation, there was a race to testify, with Christopher Davidge from Christie’s beating Diana “Dede” Brooks of Sotheby’s to the prosecutor. Even so, Brooks, who was found guilty, was allowed to dodge between homes in Manhattan and Florida and go shopping rather than go to jail because she fingered her boss, the much bigger fish Alfred Taubman, the Sotheby’s chairman, who, on her say-so, was sent to prison.
Sometimes felons do not recognise a good deal when they see one. Martha Stewart could have saved herself a lengthy, humiliating trial and the indignity of a prison sentence had she confessed to lying to investigators early on. Yet her pride would not allow her to admit an error, so she gambled and lost. Her prison time will serve little public purpose. Like Jeffrey Archer, she will put it to good account by writing prison diaries.
For some, such as Stewart, justice is a mere commodity that carries the label “caveat emptor”. But for humbler, simpler souls like Robert Coney, the observation of the Harlem Renaissance novelist Nella Larsen is more apt. “Lies, injustice and hypocrisy are a part of every ordinary community,” she said. “Most people achieve a sort of protective immunity, a kind of callousness toward them. If they didn’t, they couldn’t endure.”