Justice & The ‘My Truth’ Fallacy
Over the last few months, I have been tracking buzzwords and current colloquialisms in an attempt to make sure I was understanding things accurately, and at best, correctly.
One of these things stuck out to me and it was the concept of ‘my truth’. I had initially understood this to be a shortening of ‘in my personal experience’ or something like that, but then the concept of ‘my truth’ started getting used in a different context, one that is more positional rather than anecdotal. One that initially implied learning due to openness, but ultimately just another form of permanent persuasion.
This concept has slowly become a negative thing for me to observe particularly in presentations of opinion. I had viewed ‘my truth’ as a self-realization, or actualization that was healthy for one’s personal growth. Things like that are, mostly. Opinions are meant to be agreed or disagreed with, shared or shunned, but mainly impersonally challenged. However, in the presence of ‘my truth’ such challenges are considered an affront, offensive, and indicative of many things including bigotry.
The worst of this I have noticed is that people use their ‘my truth’ as a way to oversimplify something which they have strong feelings about. This oversimplification of information often is displayed through a meme or cleverly arranged infographic.
One such instance depicted a white male having received eight years in jail for twenty-eight counts of child molestation in direct comparison to a young black lady receiving a life sentence for murdering her rapist/trafficking participant.
On the face of such a comparison, it is very easy to disparage the light sentencing of a child molester vs. the extreme of a life sentence for a person who rid the world of an evil - and it should be. When we factor in their color, the man being white and the lady being black, this is easy to feel correctly about and consider whether or not race is a factor. What the meme does however is conflate two very unrelated circumstances and looks to make them equal by using race as a point. The meme cleverly acknowledges that society, by and large, have zero sympathy for child molesters, but do have sympathy for victims. It stacks the deck for the viewer of that information to make a moral stance for what is a no-brainer. Except that it isn’t.
In 2006, Cyntoia Brown had been charged with murder and found guilty w/pre-meditation. The man she killed was evidentially a truly evil person, and it is absolutely difficult to sit there and feel that punishing her with a life sentence was the right thing to do given that knowledge. The complexity of her case involved the man she killed, initially not being known as a vile man. The character of everyone involved in this, is important. The context of their relationship was very criminal, for both her and him. The homicide evidence against her satisfied the legal test for pre-meditated murder, which also meant a mandatory life sentence, parole eligibility in 2055.
The meme framed the disparity in sentencing as having been based on color, and now from knowing all of this — we know that it is not true. Revelations and discoveries about her background, her associates, the man she killed, her actions afterward, all contribute to building a case against her. These are issues of character, not color. The law as applied in her situation, was mandatory sentencing for the crime committed. It was not determined by any other criteria. If the media or oversimplifiers asked the question ‘Is a mandatory life sentence for a convicted murderer too harsh?’ the likely answer is ‘No’. — in that scenario it would be intellectually very simple to believe that Cyntoia Brown was appropriately sentenced.
Yes, there is an issue with sentencing that needs thoughtful discussion here, but I want you to know that this story has been enabled to continue in a positive direction in 2019. The governor of Tennessee, Bill Haslam, granted her clemency with conditions of release, citing her individual progress with education while incarcerated, and finally acknowledging issues with the sentencing guidelines for juveniles. This was made possible by people making the right appeals to state authority, and working hard to get this in front of him.
For many people, it is true that Ms. Brown’s life sentence at sixteen given her circumstances, is harsh. In the big picture, nearly everyone would agree that a murder conviction does warrant this type of punishment. However, in 2010, 2012, and 2016 SCOTUS made decisions on juvenile sentencing laws that put an end to these mandatory life-sentencing for non-homicide convictions, eventually restricting mandatory life-sentences for juveniles entirely. Since then, courts around the nation have been case-by-case applying these rulings retroactively (which is not typical) to life-sentences applied to juveniles prior to 2010-2016. Cyntoia Brown, benefitted from this step in the right direction, justice is self-correcting.
You pick them out of there at the age of 30 or 40 and say, 'Have you learned to read? What have you done in here? Are you the assistant librarian? You make the best license plates? What are you doing?' If they just grunt, throw them in there for the rest of their life.
But for God's sake, give a guy a chance if he's trying to do something different and sort them out case by case.
- Fmr. Senator Alan Simpson, Wyoming (R) - also with history as a juvenile offender.
Justice, very broadly seeks equal or fair methods for restitution, retribution, and distribution — repayment, punishment, and then how much of who gets either of those. In terms of equal and fair, justice also is expected to be impartial. This is a positive trend, and it is the kind of thing more people need to be seeing.
