Justice is one of the aspects of people’s life which must occur in any situation. Law, courts and government are the main guarantees of justice. There are some cases or, maybe, some situations, when people do not trust law representatives, who cannot maintain order, and people decide to dispense justice by themselves. These cases are rather numerous, especially when a crowd represents the law. It is impossible to stop the crowd, so the ‘justice’ in such cases is usually maintained without any fair hearings.
Courts exist to maintain discipline and justice in society. There are a lot of types and classifications of courts in the USA. The main court is The Supreme Court of the USA. There are United States Courts of Appeals on the lower level and the United States District Courts which appear in every district. There are cases people do not want involve courts in their affairs and in this case unfair decisions may be committed.
The movie “The Ox-Bow Incident” is a good example when the crowd decides whether to sentence judged people to death or to give them life. The crowd did not want to leave any chance to convinced people to avoid punishment and decided to dispense justice without any court examinations at that very moment. Three innocent persons were lynched. They did not have any opportunities to prove their innocence or at least to be listened to.
The court examinations exist not by chance. There are lots of arguments which support the idea of court examination. The court procedure should be objective. Only being objective, we may come to the conclusion whether person is guilty or not. (Lind and Tyler, chapter 2) Objectivity gives us an opportunity to look on situation without any prejudices and to commit a justice decision. Justice is when the situation is clear, when both sides have been listened to and biases do not influence the decision. The only way to reach justice is to turn to procedural justice, in the court with judges. (Lind and Tyler, chapter 4)
Court procedure is a very complicated and long process. Two sides are involved in the process: the defender and the prosecutor, who act opposite. These people should collect some evidences and then represent the ideas of their clients in the court. After that, jury has some time to discuss the case and to pronounce sentence.
The incident, which is described in the movie, is the punishment of people by crowd, who thought to be criminals. People were killed for the incident they did not commit. Moreover, there was no any criminal incident committed at all. If those who sentenced people to death came to court and the case was being solved by law structures, the end of the case would have been different. The decision, made in the movie was not supported by any evidences, there was not any fair procedure at all. There was just a crowd which was guided by their feelings and emotions, and did not want to listen to anybody.
There are seven people in the movie, who wanted to maintain real justice and wanted to take the case to the court. These people understood that angry crowd could not maintain justice. The sentence was turned in action, three people were killed, and it appeared that they were innocent and that no criminal action was committed.
What does come out of this movie? That there is no justice without fair trial, court, judge and law. People cannot just see one person, catch him/her and announce him/her to be a criminal. The whole situation appeared in one small town, and when the case was being committed the sheriff did not come. Sheriff appears when the ‘sentence of the case’ was already turned in action. Sheriff appears to give news that there was no any incident committed, that everything is ok and people can calm down.
It is impossible to talk about any justice in the case committed by the crowd, it is impossible to talk about the fact that justice was served by the posse at Ox-Bow. Sheriff was present neither before nor during the “procedure”, and coming out of this, we way insist that there is no any fair justice in the movie. Justice cannot be committed spontaneously, without evidences, and moreover, these evidences should be considered and the court judge should make a decision whether the accused is innocent or not. There is a good article in the court law in most countries: the person is innocent till his guilt is not proven. The movie under consideration is a great example of injustice actions not only of people but also of posse.
Sheriff is the representative of law. The town where he does his duties is small and it is impossible not to be aware of all actions which citizens are eager to commit. Sheriff did not take part in the “procedure” of deciding whether three persons are guilty or not. He just decided to stand beside.
There are cases when even judges consider wrong decisions. There may be lots of reasons for this, starting with judge incompetence, and finishing with bribes. These cases appear, but still they are not so numerous. And even in these cases, angry crowd is not the way out. People are people and they are not given the power to decide whether to give life to this or that person or to kill him/her.
In conclusion, justice is a very complicated process, which should be supported by evidences and objectivity. The justice should be maintained only by law representatives, as only they know how to lead the procedure and create a fair decision.
Works Cited
Lind, E. Allan. Tyler, R. Tom. “Early research in procedural justice.” Chapter 2. in The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice. Premium Press.
Lind, E. Allan. Tyler, R. Tom. “Procedural justice in law I: legal attitudes and behavior.” Chapter 4 in The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice. Premium Press.