Brett Kavanaugh, Political Enemy Number One

Brett Kavanaugh is not a rapist; he’s a witch!  You didn’t know that?  I hereby accuse Brett Kavanaugh of Conjuration, Witchcraft, and dealing with Evil and Wicked Spirits.

He shall be tried in secret.  Hearsay will be admissible.  All accusations, no matter how unreliable – like his sexual encounters with demons - shall be used against him.  He will not be allowed to defend himself.  [American Criminal Courts: Legal Process and Social Context by Casey Welch, John Randolph Fuller]  And there will be no presumption of innocence; In fact, he will be presumed guilty unless he can prove he is innocent. [Just a Family History by Glenn L. Bower, p. 206]

We heard a lot about the presumption of innocence during the Kavanaugh confirmation process.  Tonight, I’ll tell you the story of the presumption of innocence and what can happen without it.

The history starts with the ancient Babylonian Code of Hammurabi which put the burden of proof on the accuser.  The presumption of innocence was a feature of Roman criminal law.  Today, the 5th and 14th Amendment Due Process clauses, by Supreme Court interpretation [Coffin v. United States, 156 U.S. 432 (1895)], protect the presumption of innocence.  In our system, unlike the Salem witch trials, you are innocent until proven guilty. 

The absence of the presumption of innocence is associated with some of the worst events in human history.  In the court of the Spanish inquisition, for example, the accused were presumed guilty and it was up to them to prove themselves innocent.  [Equity and Law by María José Falcón y Tella, p. 228]  The Inquisition also tortured confessions out of religious and ideological opponents of the Inquisitors.

The trials of the French Revolution, if you can call them that, were patterned after the Inquisition – no jury, no compulsory process for defendant’s witnesses, and no presumption of innocence.  [A Manual of American Ideas by Caspar T. Hopkins, 234-5]  These proceedings were directed at political enemies. Wave after wave of revolutionaries were sent to the guillotine after falling out of power.

There was no presumption of innocence in the English Star Chamber.  A finding of guilt could be based on the silence of the accused. [Presumption of Innocence in Peril: A Comparative Critical Perspective by Anthony Gray, p. 12].  The Star Chamber was used to control the king’s political enemies.  [Criminal Evidence: Principles and Cases by Thomas J. Gardner, Terry M. Anderson, p. 175]. 

There was no presumption of innocence in the show trials of Stalin’s Great Terror [The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions by Arno J. Mayer, p. 653].  Che Guevara, t-shirt boy for the revolution, perhaps said it best:  “I don’t need proof to execute a man, I only need proof that it’s necessary to execute him.” He also said, “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary … These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution!”  This is a man who once wrote in a letter to his father, “I really like killing.” And so he did.  Che personally supervised many executions while running Castro’s La Cabaña prison.

It’s no accident that these examples from history all involved political or ideological opponents.  The presumption of innocence is one of the first casualties of a totalitarian mindset when political orthodoxy is threatened.   So what are we to make of the fact that so many Americans now are willing to presume that Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh is guilty, even though his accusers could provide no evidence, no witnesses, and no corroboration.  Gang rapes at party after party – really?  These are the same people who think nothing of suborning perjury and tampering with witnesses, to wit Leland Keyser who felt pressured to change her story to help her friend Christine Blasey Ford.   If these totalitarians get their way, there will be more Salem witch trials ahead.  No man or boy – or women or girl – will be safe.

I say we put Justice Kavanaugh on the rack until he confesses to his political and ideological crimes. It’s obviously sorcery that put him on the Supreme Court and we need an FBI investigation to get to the bottom of it.