[Marxism] Bad things happen to people who get bad press

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

MercuryNews.com Update
 <http://esp.realcities.com/a/hBBvhRrAPnpdQAPtY2gAT2EyXa8/mnnw1375> JURY
SENTENCES PETERSON TO DIE
A San Mateo County jury has ruled that Scott Peterson deserves to die
for the murder of his wife, Laci, and their unborn child.
By Jessie Seyfer / Mercury News



























I know nothing about the Peterson case.  I don't have the information to
believe or disbelieve the prosecution case and the verdict.  But there
has been a touch of lynch spirit in the media, and a success in getting
a response to this, that reminds me a bit of the case of Dr. Samuel
Sheppard in Ohio in the mid-1950s. This was the case that fmade me want
to be a criminal defense lawyer because the newspaper coverage sounded
like a horrible set-up against the osteopath (even his non-mainstream
medical profession was a weapon against the poor shmuck). Sheppard, in
my opinion, has pretty much been proven innocent (insofar as you can or
need to "prove" "innocence").

Another thing to keep in mind, without any necessary support to
Peterson: Prosecutorial and police misconduct is attracted to such cases
like flies to honey.  The weapons and propaganda methods developed in
the class struggle are poured into creating a frame-up and lynch spirit
that seems to have nothing directly to do with the class struggle.  Get
the adulterer, wife and fetus killer! Sounds like a good cause, no?  And
the charge of killing the "child" is actually a partial denial of the
humanity of the murder victim. It's one thing for Uma Thurman to hunt
down the people who shot her and supposedly killed her unborn child in
the "Kill Bill" movies.  I can dig it.  But this charge is completely
antiwoman, anti-women's right to abortion, and reactionary.

The OJ Simpson case was an example of this type of case that blew up in
the prosecutor's faces because of the legal resources available to the
very wealthy defendant (unlike the middle-class Sheppard and Peterson)
and, more important, because the cops and prosecutors messed with the
national question, politicizing an otherwise nonpolitical
string-'em-up-now operation.
Fred Feldman







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