Finding the Truth

I had a conversation with someone the other day that made me do some thinking. If we should have as little government as possible who will defend the poor in criminal manners?

Now some take my beliefs as I don't want to do anything to help the poor. Nothing could be further from the truth. I do want people to take responsibility for their own actions and situations in life. The logical path from this is that people should be responsible for paying for their own defense. I simply don't believe this.

What? Isn't that a contradiction? As I always say, I try not to contradict myself. So what's going on? Well this only follows if the assumption is that government is only interested in winning whatever case the prosecution puts forth. I don't believe that is government's role. I believe governments role is to find the truth in all matters. It should have an equal interest if someone raped someone or someone is being falsely accused.

This leads me to why I thought about this, the Kobe Bryant case. Being a Laker fan I realize I am a little bias as I tend to think Kobe Bryant is innocent. However I am fully willing to admit that anybody is capable of anything and nobody knows what happened in that hotel room. However, what really disturbs me is how the D.A., Mark Hulbert, is acting in this case. The government should care as much about Kobe Bryant as it does about the alleged victim. It should care if they put an innocent man behind bars. But Mark Hulbert is treating this, ironically, like a basketball game. Win at all cost. Forget about the truth, lets slam dunkd this case and make sure we put Kobe Bryant behind bars.

What makes me say this? Kobe's defense team has asked for text messages sent between the accuser, her ex-boyfriend, and a third party just hours after the alleged assault. To me this has a huge bearing on the case as it may further strengthen the accuser's arguments or may completely shatter her credibility. Either way the prosecutor should want to know. Instead he fought the defense teams motion to obtain these records. According to the federal Electronics Communication Privacy Act, "A governmental entity may require the disclosure by a provider of electronic communication service of the contents of a wire or electronic communication, that is in electronic storage in an electronic communications system." All the D.A. had to do was make the request and the information would have been made available to him. Was he interested in the information. Absolutely not. Does it scare anybody else that the government really only cares about winning the cases it decides to prosecute?