[A man around fifty-years-old in a suit.]
“Remember that industrial waste spill a few years back? The one that contaminated our bay and drove all the fishermen out of business?
I was one of the lawyers who represented the fishermen in the civil suit against the corporation responsible. And, as you probably now, after two long years of litigation the jury came back with a non-guilty verdict.
My clients couldn’t believe it; They were crushed… they couldn’t grasp how the clear culprit of could get off scot-free like that…
So I told them this story to help them understand.
I asked them to imagine they find a corpse stabbed several times… and right next to the body there’s this guy holding a big knife that’s dripping with blood.
The guy, the obvious suspect, doesn’t resist arrest. In fact, he’s very courteous and fully collaborates with the police.
As expected, he gets charged with murder. But when the trial starts, to everyone’s surprise, he declares he didn’t do it. He assures the court it was actually his right hand, who, acting on its own accord, pushed the knife into the victim’s body.
So then they call the guy’s right hand to the stand. And among his sobbing, the hand states he happened to just be holding the knife when the guy’s feet started walking toward the victim.
To confirm the hand’s story, they call in the guy’s feet to testify. First, the right foot, who quickly clarifies it was the left foot who took the first step.
Under duress, the left foot accuses the guy’s heart of forcing him to commit the crime since he couldn’t have moved without its constant supply of blood.
The heart is also called in and, in a big twist, he blames the brain for everything… He calls it the mastermind.
And you may think this is the whole truth… Of course, the brain did it!
But not really because the brain quickly excuses himself by pointing out it was the guy’s eyes who selected the victim…
In turn, the eyes accuse the mouth of being the one who called out to the victim; the mouth does something similar to the ears, the ears to the nose, etc.
In the end, the case is so tangled and convoluted that it’s impossible to lay any blame on the guy… or his limbs.
So he walks out a free man. Just like in our case against the corporation.
Because although many of its members showed up for the trial…
There wasn’t a single conscience among them.”
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Copyright Abel Gonzalez 2016