Victims of unfair convictions
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Por: P. Fernando Pascual, L. | Fuente: Catholic.net

When a court emanates an unfair sentence, it provokes more victims than at first one could imagine. 

In the first place, there are those who are unjustly condemned. A court, called upon to punish the culprits, has made a grave mistake in harming innocents.

 

Secondly, there are the judges who are wrong. With guilt, when they are carried away by fear of public opinion, or by lack of honesty in accepting bribes, or by antipathies, or by haste that prevented in-depth study of each case.

 

Or without guilt. There are unfair sentences that arise simply from the best will of the judges who, like any human being, can be mistaken in matters that are not easy to analyse. 

Third, there are victims who have suffered damage. After the wrongful sentence they may believe that a valid reparation has been achieved, when in fact the damage they suffered is added to the damage of an innocent condemned person.

 

Fourth, and surprisingly, there are the real culprits who get a certain "relief" to see that justice punishes an innocent and thus closes the door to investigations that they could take with them. 

Yes: the unpunished culprit also "suffers" enormous damage: that of not being helped to repair, to be purified by a punishment. This idea had already been defended by Plato centuries ago, and it is something that we can recognize today in every unfair sentence.

 

The world of courts is full of darkness, false clues, misleading testimonies. Some believe to succeed in being pronounced an unfair sentence, when in reality there is only true triumph when the innocents are acquitted, the culprits are punished and the victims are relieved.

 

That definitive and incorruptible judge is God. Only goodness and righteousness unite in God. Only God relieves the condemned innocents. Only God fully confronts the guilty, wrongly acquitted, with responsibility for the damage they have committed.