I understand that it is not the role of our legal system to ensure
that the optics are good. I understand that our laws requires one to be judge
by "our peers". I understand that it is appropriate to accept that it
is better that ten guilty persons go free rather than an innocent man be
jailed. I understand that the issue of "intent" is critical to a
finding of anyone being guilty of a crime. BUT it seems to me that when one
individual goes and gets a gun, fires it (even if just in the air) and then
regardless of whether he thought the gun was empty or not, points that gun in
the direction of someone, with their finger on the trigger - they must be
guilty of something when that gun fires "accidently" and a person is
killed.
A jury yesterday found Gerald Stanley innocent in the death
of Colten Boushie. The backgrounds of the individuals and the generally
accepted facts are available on various sites. From a very outside observer it
is not entirely clear what happened. Regardless - after a surprisingly brief
trial - yesterday an all white jury found Stanley innocent of second degree
murder. Understandably, Boushie's family, friends and his whole community are
saddened alarmed, depressed and angry at this outcome.
For those people, and for the thousands of people across
Canada who have followed this story and who are saddened by the jury's findings
- we are left with the sense that everything would have been different if
Boushie had not been an Indigenous Canadian. He would not have been shot, and if he had -
the trial and its outcome would have been different. Whether it is true or not,
we are all left with the sense that the trial, with an all white cast of judge,
prosecutor and defence lawyer, the all white jury found "one of their
own" innocent in the killing of someone from another race. In light of the
cultural genocide directed by the bureaucrats, politicians and do-gooders of
this country that has been ongoing for the past 150 years, it is hard to find
any other interpretation.
The result of this trial will, to some, prove that reconciliation
cannot happen, that systemic racism is so ingrained into our systems that it
will always exist until those systems are thrown out and something new
developed; that we (those of us who are of European descent) are through and
through racists, never to change. From my perception - those who think that are
wrong. The changes that are occurring are painfully slow, and there are times
when it feels as if any progress has not only stopped but has reversed itself.
It is a continual embarrassment to all Canadians. I do however, take some satisfaction in the
fact that whereas 30 years ago the case would have not been national news, that
people would not have wanted to even discuss it - that today there are protest
occurring across the country. That thousands of Canadians - Indigenous and
non-indigenous alike are offended and are prepared to speak out. We can change
and we will.
I don't have any suggestions as to what should have happened
- I am not too sure if there was anything anyone that could have been done to
get a different outcome. (I do wonder if a different crown attorney would have
been more aggressive or if there was information that the judge did not allow
into the record) but there is something that Gerald Stanley can do. He could
quietly, without lawyers or the media approach the elders of Colten Boushie's
community and ask them what he could do to demonstrate his sorrow and his regret.
He could offer to work with them to somehow repair the damage his actions have
done.
The trial was never about reconciliation - trials are a
legal process imported from another country, developed through time to give a
black or white answer. Reconciliation is about the gray areas. It is talking
about things that cannot be easily defined, it is about feelings of loss, of
hurt and of being made to feel separate. Those things can only be addressed
when one individual talks with openness to another.
Perhaps it is time for Stanley to do that.
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