Armchair QBs as jury members?

Here’s something to ponder as you drink your coffee this morning.
One of the biggest problems with society’s need for instant news – and, in the case of the wayward balloon flight last week, instant blame – is that the people who want instant prosecution may be sitting in judgment of people accused of a crime some day.
That’s just plain scary.
The balloon – minus the 6-year-old boy thought to be inside – landed less than 24 hours before all of the public pundits and the news pundits started wondering about hoaxes, whether the parents wanted to return to the limelight of television (they had been on a TV reality show at least twice). Some had enough gall to declare that they knew it was a hoax from the minute the balloon landed.
Funny. In the newsroom of MetroWest Newspapers, we wondered what happened to the child, whether he and/or a box he may have been riding in fell off the balloon, whether the child was badly injured. Maybe that’s our softer side. Maybe that’s because most of the people at MetroWest Newspapers are parents themselves.
Part of the reason to find someone at fault, absent facts that could hold up in court is the 24-hour news cycle. Ever noticed what sorts of issues wind up on the cable news each night? It’s not the sort of stuff that keeps people’s attention and offers precious little in the way of information to help us become more educated citizens. It does fill seven-minute segments, which helps the news networks. The debate on health care this summer doesn’t count, unless you are a big fan of yelling, screaming and other forms of bullying.
We use a process for criminal cases in this country that has no room for speed, nor should it. Incidents happen, police investigate to determine if there was a crime, the district attorney decides on charges and then there’s a trial. The Founding Fathers didn’t have CNN or Fox News in mind when they were at work. And while not wishing to discourage free speech, the Founding Fathers probably didn’t have Monday morning quarterbacks in mind either.
Here’s something else to ponder before you opt to ream the parents of the little boy. Assuming the sheriff’s office opted to pursue a criminal complaint, according to the Larimer County sheriff, the worst charge the parents could face is a third-degree misdemeanor count of filing a false report. The sheriff said that was a step up from a petty offense, such as urinating on the sidewalk.
It’s great to see a robust debate in any forum. But it misses a certain something when it becomes armchair quarterbacking and where people who haven’t been criminally charged are guilty until proven innocent.
That’s not what the Founding Fathers had in mind.