Back in Jakarta

Though contrary to our original plan, I am back in Jakarta without my family, who remain in Singapore.  The reason for my early return is a family emergency has compelled us to return to Arizona for a few weeks.  We'll be leaving next Wednesday and I needed both to put in some time at the office as well as retrieve a few items from our home in Jakarta for our trip to the U.S.

I arrived late Wednesday night and spent Thursday and Friday in the office.  Friday's weather provided an annoying reminder of the challenges of living in Jakarta.  Heavy rain fell shortly after 3 PM.  My planned schedule for Friday evening was:

4 PM - Leave work
5:30 PM - Yoga at my house
7 PM - Leave for a dinner with a friend
8 PM - Arrive for dinner

The rain, and a bazaar in North Kemang, changed my schedule to:

3:50 PM - Leave work
5 PM - inform yoga instructor I would be late
5:30 PM - inform yoga instructor I needed to reschedule
6:30 PM - decide I won't make it home and should just go to dinner
6:45 PM - Traffic finally clears so I go home
7:00 PM - arrive home (that's right, 3 hours to drive what normally requires 45 minutes)
7:15 PM - leave for dinner
8 PM - arrive for dinner

Indonesia must do something about their infrastructure if they ever expect to be a developed nation.  Without a good highway system, everything else they are working for will be irrelevant.

A Photojournal of Singapore

We always have fun in Singapore.

Welcome the new edition

Daniel Justin was born at 12:23 AM on 12 July after 2 hours of labor weighing in at 3.975 KG and 53 cm long.

 

Mom and baby are doing great.

American Justice

I've never understood America's infatuation with watching trials unfold real-time.  I didn't watch a minute of the OJ Simpson trial. I watched very little of the Casey Anthony trial - mostly because my wife wanted to watch it and I was in the same room.  To me, they were no different than every other defendant in every other trial that has no affect on my daily life.  These were murder trials and there was nothing more unique about these trials than any other murder trial other than the media attention they garnered.

Over the next several months, politicians, media, and anyone with a pulpit will offer their opinions on the lessons we should learn from the Anthony verdict.  Using my pulpit, I say there really is only one lesson to learn:

The media should not cover courtroom proceedings until after the verdict is rendered.

Here's why:

1)  Impartial jury.  In both the Casey Anthony and the OJ Simpson trials, the state had to find jurors in a locale different from a different region.  Why?  Because the media in the local area covered the proceedings so heavily, it was impossible to find twelve men and women who had not already formed an opinion on the case.  As more and more trials achieve the types of ratings the Casey Anthony trial attained, the ability to find impartial juries will decrease.  Will we then export our trials to foreigners?  Will juries consist only of those people who have no TV, no internet and never read a newspaper?  Are either of those groups likely to possess the necessary intelligence to properly digest evidence and render a proper verdict?

2)  The truly innocent.  Remember Richard Jewell?  The jury of public opinion convicted him of the Olympic Park bombings.  Media coverage of the accusation ruined his life.  We later learned that Eric Rudolph actually committed the bombings.  How does Richard Jewell get those years back?  Or take the recent case of Strauss-Kahn.  Initial media reports vilified this man.  Later news articles reported the accuser discussed the financial windfall she would be receiving for the accusations and highlighted her questionable past.  The media now treads very lightly reporting this case instead of just dropping it completely.

3)  The Justice System.  I don't have an opinion of innocence or guilt of either OJ Simpson or Casey Anthony.  I didn't sit on the jury and I didn't review the evidence ; nor do I have any intention of doing so.  A jury already did that for me and decided there was not enough to convict (not that the person was innocent).  Our justice system assigns twelve citizens at random to make those decisions for us.  You either believe in this approach to justice, or you do not.  The alternative is to have one person or a select group of people make all the decisions - which gives them highly corruptible power.  I'll take my chances with the random twelve.

4)  Jury tampering.  The jury knows when a trial is receiving media coverage.  Cameras in the courtroom, a full gallery, press outside the courthouse; these are all evidence there is tremendous interest in the court case.  Jurors, as much as I like to believe they want justice above all else, are human beings.  Press coverage means book deals and money.  What is likely to generate more interest in the jury's story, a verdict everyone expects or a verdict no one expected?  More interest means more money.  The likelihood of corruption is too high when celebrity is a possible end result of controversy.


I think we can learn a lot from France and Canada, and I'm sure several other countries, who have banned the media from reporting on ongoing investigations.  It isn't to protect the guilty.  They do this to protect the wrongly accused.  Americans used to believe it was better for one hundred murderers to go free than to kill an innocent.  I'm saddened by the fact our perspective appears to have changed.