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The U.S. legal system is organized as an adversarial contest: in civil cases, between two citizens; in criminal cases, between a citizen and the stat… - Jon Krakauer
" "The U.S. legal system is organized as an adversarial contest: in civil cases, between two citizens; in criminal cases, between a citizen and the state. Physical violence and intimidation are not allowed in court, whereas aggressive argument, selective presentation of the facts, and psychological attack are permitted, with the presumption that this ritualized, hostile encounter offers the best method of arriving at the truth. Constitutional limits on this kind of conflict are designed to protect criminal defendants from the superior power of the state, but not to protect individual citizens from one another….All citizens are presumed to enter the legal arena on an equal footing, regardless of the real advantages that one of the parties may enjoy. The Constitution, therefore, offers strong guarantees for the rights of the accused, but no corresponding protection for the rights of crime victims. As a result, victims who choose to seek justice may face serious obstacles and risks to their health, safety, and mental health.
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About Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer (born April 12, 1954) is an American journalist, author of non-fiction books, and mountaineer. In 1999 he received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Although he is perhaps best known as an "adventure writer," Krakauer has in fact written about a wide range of subjects since very early in his career.
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Additional quotes by Jon Krakauer
"The courtroom oath — "to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" — is applicable only to witnesses. Defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges don't take this oath — they couldn't! Indeed, it is fair to say the American justice system is built on the foundation of not telling the whole truth. It is the job of the defense attorney — especially when representing the guilty — to prevent, by all lawful means, the "whole truth" from coming out."
In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it upon herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail. JUDITH LEWIS HERMAN Trauma and Recovery
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Walter Mittys with Everest dreams need to bear in mind that when things go wrong up in the Death Zone — and sooner or later they always do — the strongest guides in the world may be powerless to save a client's life; indeed, as the events of 1996 demonstrated, the strongest guides in the world are sometimes powerless to save even their own lives. Four of my teammates died not so much because Rob Hall's systems were faulty — indeed, nobody's were better — but because on Everest it is the nature of systems to break down with a vengeance.
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