Marcel Berlins (The Guardian): How Milosevic made the courts look foolish

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Guardian Unlimited (London)
Dated Monday March 13

How Milosevic made the courts look foolish
By Marcel Berlins

Slobodan Milosevic has left a disastrous legal legacy, one which has already been of immense help to one of his principal beneficiaries, Saddam Hussein. He has shown the world that a defendant accused of the greatest crimes can play with the criminal justice system, make it look foolish, and by doing so undermine the very principles of international justice.

He did so, first, by refusing to accept the right of the tribunal to try him, then by refusing to appoint a lawyer in his defence and denying cooperation to the counsel appointed by the tribunal to help him. For more than four years, he used every tactic to delay the trial and demonstrate the shortcomings of the process. Because it was so important internationally to show how fair his trial was, the judges were constrained in taking any punitive action. True, some time later this year, he probably would have been convicted of most of the charges against him. To that extent, justice would have been done. But not in a manner in which the international community could feel satisfaction.

What will be remembered is not how well the wheels of justice turned, but how long the trial was, and how a clever mass murderer was able to manipulate it. Saddam Hussein's trial, more limited in scope than Milosevic's, is suffering from the same syndrome. The defendant's ranting is getting more publicity than the evidence against him, and the judges are finding it difficult to control him. The new international criminal court, which has not yet heard a case, must study these two trials carefully, to ensure it doesn't make the same mistakes.

I was in a cinema last week and saw a trailer for the new Sharon Stone film, Basic Instinct II. One bit shows Stone sitting astride the iconic Arne Jacobsen chair that had immortalised the image of Christine Keeler. That day it was revealed that John Profumo had died. I could not let that coincidence pass without thinking of the chair, or rather, the legal implications of Keeler's pose.

This might be a hint of what to expect on that glorious day when the neocons finally face justice.

[RoyGBiv]

1. Am I insane?

What does the last half of that article have to do with the first half?

[Boojatta]

3. Do you mean this?

I was in a cinema last week and saw a trailer for the new Sharon Stone film, Basic Instinct II. One bit shows Stone sitting astride the iconic Arne Jacobsen chair that had immortalised the image of Christine Keeler. That day it was revealed that John Profumo had died. I could not let that coincidence pass without thinking of the chair, or rather, the legal implications of Keeler's pose.

Possibility #1: The author of the article is trying to show you how disconcerting it is for the judges by doing something similar to us, the readers.

Possibility #2: The reference to "legal implications" is thought to be sufficient to tie the two topics together.

Possibility #3: The author ran out of things to say on the first topic and produced his full quota of words by switching to another topic. Given that many people only read the first couple of paragraphs of an article anyway, many readers won't even notice.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Berlins writes a regular column on legal matters

which often covers more than one topic, and the web layout often misses out the divisions between the subjects (check some of the columns listed from previous weeks, and you see that some get bold type to indicate a new subject). He also has a slight obsession with horse racing, as the last couple of paragraphs show.

[Boojatta]

2. Whatever happened to contempt of court?

Because it was so important internationally to show how fair his trial was, the judges were constrained in taking any punitive action.

Saddam Hussein's trial, more limited in scope than Milosevic's, is suffering from the same syndrome. The defendant's ranting is getting more publicity than the evidence against him, and the judges are finding it difficult to control him.

Is contempt of court only for people who are not guilty of serious offenses?

Why not keep Saddam Hussein in solitary confinement with nothing to read or watch until such time as he decides that continuation of the trial would be more interesting?

[bemildred]

5. Interesting piece.

The problem is that we are conflating notions of the abstract grinding of the wheels of justice with the punishment of defeated enemies and sovereign wrongdoers. Matters that are essentially political (the public humiliation of Saddam Hussein for example) should not be conflated with notions of ordininary criminal law. Whatever Hussein is, he is not a burglar, and his crimes are not of the same nature as what a mugger does.

This fellow, in this piece, in the later part of it, is pointing precisely at the ambiguity of law, that while we normally pretend that law is a rigid and consistent formal system, in fact it is not, and in fact it operates largely on opinion and convention, not fact and logic, and that it serves the ends of purposes of the rulers of men, and only secondarily the purposes and ends of the public at large, and I believe he is suggesting that we would do better in dealing with the likes of Slobo were we to be more candid with ourselves as to what we are about.

[Igel]

6. Yes, indeed.

At least for the most part; I'd like to quibble with a minor detail or two, but I'd probably lose, so why bother?

In any event, this is precisely the problem, either with Milosevich or Hussein. Etc.

[bemildred]

7. Please do, it would be a pleasure and I won't bite.

It's a thorny issue.

[Demeter]

8. Milosevic Is Still Dead, By His Own Hand, Apparently

and he ended his days indicted and imprisoned and on trial. Would that we could guarantee such a fate for our own war criminals.

[reorg]

9. what the author attempts to say

is this: You can't have a decent show trial unless you break the accused.

If you can't have confessions like in the Moscow Trials, you at least need solid proof for your accusations, like in Nuremberg. If you can't have neither, you are likely to look like the fool you are.

When a defendent successfully claims his rights, or, as in this case, proves to be a capable and even proficient advocate in his own defense, it will be noted and counteract to your intentions. There may be countless shills quickly averting that all of this is just done to obfuscate, or you can quietly shift the public's attention to other, more pressing concerns. Yet every now and then the question comes up: Milosevic, who? Did you read that there is still a trial going on against some guy, from the Balkans, I believe?

This is obviously not what you intend when setting up a show trial. Whatever the outcome may be, even if justice is served in the end: this is just a terrible waste of time and there are so many other ways to do things efficiently.

[bemildred]

10. Well said.

Part of the problem is that these people believe their own bullshit, which is a great handicap unless you really are a master of the universe, which they are not.