One Justice Begats Another

In a cold courtroom a decision is made public by a dozen souls told to make a decision. A man in elder garb then makes a statement after the jury has done their collective bit. The person in the dock is then led away never to get a public appearance in his or her lifetime. 

The simplicity is devilish. 

And so is devilish the simplicity of Robert Black taking away Jennifer Cardy in 1981. By all accounts he didn't take her away in a graceful way. He was older, stronger and more wary about what he would do to her. She was younger, weaker and not wary of what was happening to her soul.

The court in Armagh, itself a town blackened with a history of death in a similar era, today exercised an order. Black was suspected and rightly brought to trial. In turn this put an order of words into the media to slice and dice for its wider public. And here endeth the lesson of Jennifer Cardy's life.

But it should not stop at nothing.

As a criminal Robert Black does warrant more than an arrest and a conviction. He has been indicted for three murders of underage girls, and again with a grisly sense of foreboding there could be more unsolved murders bearing his mark. Where does this stop? Robert Black fits into a bracket of society that needs a very simple answer: extermination.

We are in the midst of a world of people doing wrong, being allowed to do wrong. In the context of war it has been easily written by historians that a fog exists. In the field of gang warfare a smaller war takes place. But with the unerring coldness of murder, especially with the slaughtering of infants, only one simple person succeeds. 


In the context of living with a world stuck in the detritus of century's religions, followed by the century's history of not knowing, one single question needs to be honoured. 

What masks complete justice is law. Law makes a very special assumption that a justice at its basic of levels is untamed and wild. It pours cold water on the kneejerk reaction of retribution, despite ignoring completely the rawest of emotions Robert Black put into extinguishing the smile from Jennifer Cardy's cheeks. Court cases indelibly become a second funeral, the facts are dead along with the victim. Daughters should run away and disappear only in the context of being free after the years of growing up and learning with their parents or guardians. Twelve jurors should not even bear witness to this as it's nothing to do with them. 

Like anyone who has done something terrible with no compelling reason to explain it, Robert Black should have the same done to him. Not by a mob. Not by the Daily Mail. But by an equal of stature and venom. No courts, no media interest, no trail. 

Jennifer Cardy's mother will of course sleep easier this evening, but how will Black sleep? Perhaps he shouldn't. 

The jury's back: he shouldn't.