The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.40           November 11, 1996 
 
 
Capitalist Injustice System  

Courts in the United States are instruments of capitalist rule that defend, above all, the interests of the ruling class. Two recent trials in New York highlight this.

Francis Livoti, a New York cop, choked Anthony Báez, a 29- year-old Latino, to death last December. His crime? Accidentally hitting a cop car with a football during a game of toss. There were eyewitnesses and medical evidence that Livoti put a chokehold on Báez. A crowd of observers, convinced the cop was guilty, sat in the courtroom for the entire proceedings. Nevertheless, state supreme court judge Gerald Sheindlin, who himself admitted the cop carried out an illegal, lethal procedure, declared Livoti not guilty October 7, claiming that evidence left a doubt as to whether Livoti intended to kill Báez.

Barely two weeks later on October 22, another New York court convicted a homeless man of murder in the tragic death of a firefighter. Edwin Smith, who was trying to keep warm in an abandoned building, accidentally set off a fire. Firefighter John Clancy died trying to put out the flames. A jury convicted Smith of murder. The court argued that he did drugs, is homeless, and is "reckless" - therefore he is also a killer. Smith was also convicted of arson, which Webster's Collegiate Dictionary describes as "the willful or malicious burning of property, especially with a criminal or fraudulent intent." It was the capitalist system, which is incapable of providing housing and generates hundreds of thousands of homeless workers in New York alone, that killed Clancy, not a homeless man trying to keep from freezing to death.

There is no contradiction between these rulings. The cops, courts, and prisons are an integrated system designed to protect and serve the interests of the propertied class.

Workers and cops do not get equal presumption of innocence in the bourgeois courts. Under capitalism, workers are presumed guilty, guilty, guilty and cops are presumed innocent. That's why Francis Livoti, who acted as the judge, jury, and executioner of Anthony Báez, walked free, while Edwin Smith is facing 15 years to life in prison.

 
 
 
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