Justice distorted (was: Re: the mirror of erised fulfilled?)

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 91504

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Partha Mukhopadhyay 
<ahtrap at y...> wrote:
 
Partha:

<snipped>
> Secondly, shouldn't priori incantatem (spelling?) have
> shown that Sirius Black had not indeed blown apart the
> street full of Muggles....and Peter Pettigrew? Figured
> that might be a case of the PI spell being a recent
> invention, if you can think of spells as technologies.
> 

Geoff:
I believe that the innocence of Sirius Black was never even taken on 
board at the time of the event.

In the UK, we have had a number of cases in the last few years where 
there have been miscarriages of justice; the wrong people have been 
jailed because the police misinterpreted evidence, ignored evidence 
and sometimes invented evidence. 

Why? Because there was a public outcry demanding that the police do 
their job and find the offender(s). The police want to show that they 
are in control and doing something so they rush the case to try to 
produce a result and the bodged results have only come to light years 
later, often after deterined efforts by friends and relatives.

This is obviously echoed in the Wizarding World where we are told 
that some folk were packed off to Azkaban without a proper trial. 
Sirius was among these; there was enough circumstancial evidence to 
incriminate him - compounded by Peter's words and actions. Fudge in 
particular has shown himself to be willing to manipulate the truth to 
present himself and the Ministry in a good light which helps to 
consolidate his power base and conversely unwilling to initiate any 
steps to confirm evidence put forward with which he does not agree. 
Look at his behaviour at the end of GOF as an example. He seems to be 
prepared to deliberately ignore methods of checking on facts if they 
are going to undermine the stance he takes.

Umbridge is allowed to act as the official mouthpiece of Fudge at 
Hogwarts and in so doing hide the looming danger posed by the return 
of Voldemort. The Daily Prophet adds to this by its scurrilous 
campaign against Dumbledore and Harry. No consideration is given that 
they might be right. Here, we are seeing the kind of repression, 
distorion of the truth and suppression of a real justice system which 
has so often occurred uinder a totalitarian state in the past.