"Let justice be done should the sky fall!"

For those of you that don't know me, I am an attorney by trade, though I handle mostly labor cases, a good friend of mine asked for my help on a criminal case. My friend was a CFO on a multinational company which was recently taken over. As usual, those without severance payments upon termination are the first to go, and my friend wasn't the exception. But this was not all, he among other officers was charged with a special form of larceny and embezzlement.

Funny thing is how we usually judge people BEFORE actual sentencing is pronounced, thus jails in North and South America are flooded with people awaiting sentence. Did you know that in some states 60% of a jails inmate population is awaiting sentence? I wonder what happened to "innocent until proven otherwise".

My buddy was arrested last April and bail was set at 1.6 mil, so he had to face trial in jail. A curious legalese detail about this special mixture between larceny and embezzlement is that you have to have powers of administration from the accusing party in order to appropriate goods entrusted to the accused administration. So did he had such powers? NOOOOOO. So what the hell was that judge thinking when the trial started? Well for starters the company's attorney was close pals with him AND the DA. What they used as a base for the acusation was that my friends signature was important (so that the CEO knew he had reviewed the transaction, even though not necessary for all company checks... There you have it! He had the power to put his signature on company checks!

When you face a battle like this you tend to lose hope and faith in the legal system, because you watch helplessly how the law can be bended and corrupted by man's twisted interests, and how the real power behind our sacred legal institutions is MONEY, not the money my buddy supposedly stole, but the one distributed by our "honorable" authorities.

Fortunately when you accuse someone of a crime, and the DA and Judge are your buddies you tend to lower your guard, you tend to overlook small details, you tend to ignore that appeals exist, and that somewhere, someone still believes in a just system, that someone thinks that our lives can be perfected by a system of laws that serve man, not the other way around. So the DA and the Judge made several mistakes in the interpretation of the law, altered the facts and the ruling to start the trial was reversed by an appellate court. My fried was released last Friday and was reunited with his wife and 3 kids (one of them was born while he was in prison).

You might say "worse cases exist in which the poor fella doesn't get out 'till years later" but that is now what we should celebrate. We should celebrate that this one only spent 2 months in jail for a crime he didn't commit.

So now... Back to gaming!

I'm happy to report that Mass Effect returned my faith in gaming, which I left abandoned for quite some time (2 months is a LOT), And that I'm playing Age of Conan as a lowly level 5 Conqueror that goes by the name Arcadiuskol in the Hyperborian server.

AND I know my idea about the 5 things I think I know about someone blog didn't work as I expected, but I'm currently fixing this.

Cheers!

And LET JUSTICE BE DONE SHOULD THE SKY FALL!