Unfairly accused
Have you ever had a friend or family member accuse you of something that wasn’t even close to being true, no matter the evidence to the contrary? And they held that position without discussing it with you? It is a helpless feeling.
I heard the other day about a man who was let out of prison after serving 26 years, because the authorities now had absolute proof that he wasn’t guilty. Of course, he had said all along he wasn’t guilty. And then I heard of a woman who was freed from prison, after serving two years for the poisoning death of her husband.
They had said she used arsenic. Turns out, the lab tests were wrong. There was no trace of arsenic in his body; he died of a heart attack. How does society correct these horrible wrongs?
In a philosophy class I had once, we used to play a game. The game was to answer this question, and justify your answer: In the judicial system, how many guilty men are you willing to set free, in order to avoid the imprisonment of one innocent man?
I visualize this question as society’s hand on a giant justice scale, and we can tilt or weigh the system in any manner we wish. If we set the scale to such a rigid standard that no guilty person will ever be set free, then we must accept the consequence of sending a fair number of innocent people to jail. This is, of course, untenable, as society would lose faith in the judicial system.
If we set the scale such that no innocent person is ever imprisoned falsely, then there will be a lot of guilty people declared not guilty and released into society. This, too, can cause a loss of faith in our system of laws.
In a free society, we place a rigorous burden of proof on our prosecutors, and trust that a collective common sense, which should result from the jury system, will keep innocent people from being convicted. But, alas, sometimes it fails, and the innocent are convicted, or the guilty go free.
In a more totalitarian system, the burden of proof is not so rigorous, and people are convicted and imprisoned, or worse, on scant or little evidence. Many innocent people are punished and imprisoned, or worse.
Our society deals as best it can with this issue with the selection of its judges, prosecutors, attorneys and our jury system. But what about in your personal relationships? Have you ever had to bear the burden of false accusations?
Some people seem to look for the worst in a person, and will hang tenaciously to their belief, despite the evidence to the contrary. What do you do at that point?
If you have been falsely accused, with no effort made by the accuser to talk to you about it, or to try to learn your side of the story, one response is to continue to be the best person you can be, and hope that one day the truth will shine through. As has been variously attributed to Buddha and Confucius, three things cannot be long hidden, the sun, the moon and the truth.
Making false accusations and name calling take no intelligence or effort whatsoever. Unfortunately, for our society, they have become quite commonplace. They are favorite tools of the small and narrow mind. If those who falsely accuse you fit in that category, another approach is to just ignore them. To cause you discomfort is likely their goal. Don’t give them the satisfaction.
But the best thing you can do is give them the benefit of the doubt, even though they neglected to bestow upon you the same benefit. Do it anyway. In the Sermon on the Mount a man from Nazareth called it turning the other cheek.