Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / March 18, 1971, edition 1 / Page 2
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m 'The more I feed the more it takes I' EDITORIALS Never Forge* That These Editorials Are The Of'-ion Of One Man ____ And tie May Be Wrong The Question of Privilege There is no more fragile area in law ■than that which pertains to “privilege,” and' current efforts tend to make this tender area even more fragile. In Lenoir County Superior Court Judge Pilston Godwin of Gatesville has sign ed an order demanding that the state produce in court confidential informers -because this is necessary to the defense of a young man in whose car marijuana was found. This immediately raises the question that if the presence of such a confiden tial informer is necessary in one case then why is this not true in every case. If the inference is that an informer may have maliciously ensnared one de fendant why doesn’t this inference ex tend to every defendant. If it is necessary to the defendant to betray the relationship between an officer and a confidential informer why couldn’t this same prayer be entertain ed in such other privileged areas as that •which normally exists between lawyer and client, doctor and patient, priest and parishioner, man ,and wife. The courts have woven a crazy quilt of contradictions from which there real ly is no possible escape except to add another pitch to the already badly bungled pattern of law. The test of reliability of an informer 5s whether the things he has told 'an provf. to be true and can hardly 3temfrom$he ugly proposition that there Is any such filing possible as a “reliable confidential informer.’, The very act of ,:A.:jr f'ifyiT'mhBjfcMnmV"’ Vu'r''-'• informing has connotations that hardly square with the complimentary adjec tive “reliable.” It is the business of the courts to sift the evidence, to weight it in the light of all the evidence and then to find and to find beyond a reasonable doubt whether a defendant is guilty or inno cent. If the court is to presume that each informer is also a “fixer” then the law must presume the same thing about each law enforcement officer, which is a pre sumption we hope- the courts are not quite ready to jump. Army Idiocy One of the more ridiculous whlnings to come from the direction of the arm ed forces recently has been about the poor soldiers who are on welfare be cause they cannot live off their pay. A little examination reveals that all of this trouble steins from the Army idiocy which has permitted the lowest ranking enlisted men to haul — at their own expense — their families to over seas posts, where prices are high, jpbs are non-existant and the commercial rap ing of Americans is a Way of life. Instead of the Army whining about the plight of the poor GI and his family in Western EuropeiWhy don’t the powers thht exist simply forbid the dragging of families around to overseas - After petty delays an top pf petty de lays next month the Republican majority will take over the policy-making duties for the Lenoir County School Board. Let all of us who believe in the need for common sense to be returned to the public schools hope and pray that these three citizens will stand firm in their pledge to totally support and install a true system of freedom of choice in the racial make-up of the county schools. Undoubtedly a mountain of rhetoric and technicalities wiU be dumped on the backs of this courageous trio. Let us hope their shoulders and their hearts are strong enough to bear the burden. A return to the letter of the law, which is what the Civil Rights Act of 1964, insistes upon: Freedom of Choice, noth ing more and nothing less is the most pressing public concern of every com munity in the nation where there is a considerable racial mix of school popu lations. The courts have ruled that if a true Freedom of Choice plan does not force racial mixing then it 4s the duty of the school officials to do the mixing themselves, but this is not what the law says, only what a handful of non elective petty judicial tyrants has said. It is the duty of every public school board to enforce fairly and completely the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which was enacted by congress and remains the law of the land until congress either changes its majority mind or until the law is declared unconstitutional by llit supreme court. Neither of these has taken place. Only the court has im morally and illegally ruled that if the law written by congress does not bring about a. sufficient racial mix then it automatically is the duty of school of ficials to force the requisite racial mix. The idiocy of such a course ruling is too apparent for much comment, except to point out that Negroes comprise about 11 per cent of the national population so the requisite classroom mix would be 11 per cent Negro students in every classroom in the nation but the distribu tion of Negroes nationally makes this impossible and makes impractical every other kind of forced mixing. sioii officers do have their travel ex penses for their families paid by the tax payers and for good reasons: First, that their tour of duty will be of sufficient length to make the taking of families de sirable, while the lower grade service men are generally short-term assignees to overseas duty and seldom re-enlist. Of course it is axiomatic that “rank has its privileges.” If rank did not have these and other privileges there' would be no profit in accepting the responsi bilities of rank. Not only does the army invite the sob-sister stories about the poor GTs family it also contributes, to ;the bad name of Americans overseas and, for the little it is worth, also contributes further to the ^alance of payments deficit our country has recently been suffering be oause of expenditures by service, fami lies overseas. , ’ ;vV There is absolutely no logical basis in reason for raising the salary and fringe benefits of lower grade enlisted men $*: . that point where young brides and The wfcr against the dope traffic is undoubtedly the worse battle society has ever faced in these United States. Not only is the physical threat to a- large per cent of our youth involved, but there is also a grave danger that our troubled courts may not survive the problems which the drug traffic presents.' Without exception every dope push er arrested in Lenoir County in the past year has hollered “Entrapment!” Their inference being that either officers or informers or both were deliberately en meshing innocents in felony charges. And without information police are total ly powerless in this fight, not hide a hundred dollars stumphole whisky on his person ui his premises so well that a trained ficer cannot find it. . But a thousand dollars worth of il legal dope can be hidden in the heel of a shoe, a trouser waist band, a belt, package of cigarettes, the lining of a jacket, and even most vulgarly in the natural opening of the body, an act which has been done many times in the smuggling and distribution of drugs. So for officers to secure evidence they must have exact information, and they must act hurriedly because the dis tribution of hundreds of thousands of ffoiigre worth of dope ran he done in a matter of minutes, and often is done just that rapidly. Officers do not have the leisurely lead time of the judge, or jury or lawyer to sit around and split thin legal hairs. Information has to be gleaned wherever it can be found and action on that in formation |has to be taken as rapidly as humanly possible if the information is to have Value. So indictment of the dope peddler is difficult and conviction is impossible un der the strained and tortured rulings which give every advantage to the crim inal and none to the officer. This brings lawyers, solicitors and judges to a direct confrontation with a hard fact of life which a majority of the legal fraternity is either to stubborn or too stupid to accept: That if they are not a part of the solution they are part of the problem. Or, .said another way, \ any lawyer, judge, or solicitor who know ingly sets free a dope pusher or any other criminal on any technical pretext cannot avoid the public view that he is an accessory to the crime himself. If technicalities must prevail over then our system is lostand each of us must arm himself and protect his fam ily, his property and himself to what ever degree is possible since our gov ernmental system will have 'failed in this basic responsibility. JONES COUNTY JOURNAL Jack Rider, Publhher Published every Thursday by the Lenoir County News Company, Inc., 605 North Herritage Street, Kinston, N. C. 28501, Phone 523-2375. Entered as Second Class Matter, May 5, 1949, at Post Office at Trenton, North Carolina, under the Act of March 3,1879. By mail first zone 33.00
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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March 18, 1971, edition 1
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