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Highlands Today

Emotion Vs. Reason

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Joe Shannon

Published: October 23, 2007

This concerns the decision of not guilty by the jury in the Lee Anderson case. Emotions about that verdict have not been as high since the O.J. Simpson trial and the same jury decision of not guilty.

Emotions were greatly enlarged by the media, with its repeated showing of the guards taking Anderson to the ground.

The problem with making judgment on the basis of emotion and not on the evidence (especially if the jury does so) is that we then lose the basis of equality under the law.

Under our law, a man or a woman is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt," and there was too much contradictory evidence presented at the trial for the prosecution to get beyond that point.

If I had been a juror, I would have come to the same conclusion the jury did, and race would have had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Joe Shannon
Lake Placid

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