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celestemagnoliathewriter · 10 months ago

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Catholic Worldbuilding and the Wizarding World - Headcanons and More

If you've read All That Remains, my Regulus-Black centric work, you'll know I've incorporated Catholicism into my fics since then. The inspiration to incorporate Catholicism came from both @artemisia-black's Lacrimosa and Fiat justitia and her world building in D&D and Pietas, and @green-and-grey-kenaz's And he Drank.

Some caveats before I go on:

These are just headcanons of mine and things I've put into my fics. They work with the world but you don't need to accept them as canon or canon-compliant. Nor am I asking you to do so. I'm just excited to have this list put together of what I've done and the research that went into it.

There are other religions and faiths in the wizarding world. As Britain became more multicultural and diverse, it meant the purebloods and wizarding population did too.

This list is specifically for certain old-school Catholic families, particularly ones like the Blacks.

Catholic HCs and world building in my works:

Old-world pureblood families were Catholic. As the Roman Empire spread, witches and wizards from other areas hopped into Britain and converted Muggles and purebloods alike from paganism to Christianity. Wizarding world Jesus was a wizard; the Resurrection can still hold up as a miracle because no magic can reverse death.

When Hogwarts was founded in about 1000 AD, a chapel was installed inside the school. In my Regulus Black-centric work, I have the chapel and its tabernacle being a personal gift from Pope John XV to Salazar Slytherin in honor of the new school being built.

Magical Catholic Mass isn’t terribly different from Muggle Catholic Mass. The key difference is that since purebloods/wizarding society tends to be more old-school than Muggles, purebloods never bothered to implement the vernacular changes of Vatican II. They still celebrate Mass in Latin.

The Pope is always aware of magical Catholics, not unlike the Prime Minister knowing about wizards. There are wizarding bishops and cardinals buried in the catacombs in the Vatican.

Magical Catholics have their own dioceses; they’re bigger, geographically speaking, because there’s a much smaller wizarding population than the general population.

Pureblood Squibs are sent to monasteries or convents.

I’ve created several locations like St. Mungo’s to accommodate various parts of wizarding society. St. Mungo was a real Britonnic saint, so all these saints below are also Anglo-Saxon/British and I’ve incorporated them into my worldbuilding, particularly in my current longfic, Supernova. Again, these are all my creations - not actual canon.

There is a privately-funded pureblood hospital called St. Teilo’s. It’s where purebloods go to avoid being treated by Muggleborn Healers or associating with Muggleborns in general. St. Teilo’s bio page.

I created a day school for pureblood girls called St. Leoba’s. In the context of my fic, Supernova, it’s where a lot of pureblood girls go to school before they go to Hogwarts, whose parents aren’t keen to educate them themselves. St. Leoba’s bio page.

There is a long-term care home called St. Hugh’s Home for Hopeless Cases. It’s a poorly funded Ministry facility for wizards with long-term illnesses and inmates from Azkaban who have been Kissed. St. Hugh of Lincoln’s bio page.

Purebloods worship at St. Aelred’s Cathedral. St. Aelred of Rievaulx was a real monastic whose abbey is now in ruins in Northumbria. I weave that into my stories by having Muggles see the abbey in ruins, but purebloods can see a proper cathedral and that’s where they have Mass. St. Aelred’s bio page.

St. Aelred also has an extensive graveyard, complete with private mausoleums for individual families. The Blacks have one of the grandest mausoleums.

The stained glass windows and art in St. Aelred’s move like photographs and portraits. The crucifix appears to be ‘living’ with blood shining on Christ’s wounds. Purebloods think it’s neat.

The Statute of Secrecy and the creation of the Church of England were tied together. The CoE was founded in the early 1500s. The Statute of Secrecy went into effect in the late 1600s. The rise in persecution against witches and wizards, particularly from Muggles associating Catholic practices with witchcraft in general, was one of the reasons why the Statute went into effect. As a result, this is one of the other reasons why purebloods are so resentful towards Muggles and Muggleborns, as most of them are Anglicans.

Most pureblood families aren’t necessarily devout. Cultural Christianity/Catholicism is fairly common, but even when it’s cultural, it’s still very much a way for purebloods to wield power, influence, and control.

Like many Catholics, old-school purebloods really like their relics and/or more ‘gory’ mementos. You may be aware that Catholics venerate (not worship, not adore, more like honoring) relics of dead saints, such as fragments of bone, skin, blood, etc. Given the Black family’s cool collection of blood and other unusual items, it makes sense to me that pureblood Catholics are fully on board with collecting pieces of dead bodies and having their own reliquaries at home.

The splitting of one’s soul is an act of violence against the sacred. I wrote a meta on Horcruxes and Soul-Splitting; I imagine that the most zealous purebloods would find horcruxes to be outright offensive, not because of the murders involved, but because of the disintegration of the soul. I would also like to highlight this meta written by @artemisia-black and @ashesandhackles, the Importance of the Soul.

#hp meta #hp headcanons #catholicism #catholic #catholicism in my fics #the black family #st teilo #st aelred #st leoba #st hugh of lincoln

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ikuudo · 1 month ago

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Arcane Artober #4: “Leader”

Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum

The wisps of smoke enthralls his fury, under the blazing sun of thy Lord Prometheus. A once tranquiled village has been robbed of its peace by the cruel. ‘Till spots of blisters start to grow, feet be stained with dirt and grime; he ran and ran, one question blares in mind:

“How doth one lives when pleas be ignored by God?”

If God were not to grant mercy, I myself shall bestow upon thine own strength.

The strength that grants others the mercy of ignorance.

— Andre Lai, “Executioner”

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bestworstcase · 6 months ago

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Any thoughts on "The Sky is Falling"? I happened to be listening to it the other day and went "wow, this seems like something BestWorstCase would have Thoughts about", but searching your blog didn't turn anything up on it. If Tumblr search has failed me (probably not for the last time), I'd be interested to see what you've written before; otherwise, I'd be interested to hear now :)

ough i do have thoughts. many thoughts. idk if i’ve ever posted them, partly because i argue with myself a lot about whether it’s a hound song or an ozma song brfghks. much as i’d like it to be the hound for rotating him reasons, though, i do think ozma is a stronger textual reading.

unhinged about songs hours ->

the motif of the sky falling obviously calls to mind the chicken little folktale, of which there are numerous variations but in all of them the kerfuffle over the sky falling is hysterical: the danger is not real. in some versions of the tale, a sly fox incites the panic on purpose at the beginning and then eats the frightened birds who turn to him for help at the end.

the song’s narrative placement also connects it to atlas, and thence to atlas telamon, the titan who holds up the sky on his shoulders. (not the world—that’s a common misconception; classical images of atlas shouldering a globe depict the celestial sphere. it’s the sky.)

so we have on one hand the apocalyptic motif of the sky falling, and on the other the very real danger to atlas, conflated together: if atlas falls, so too must the sky… except that ‘the sky is falling’ is idiomatically an irrational fear. atlas may fall—that danger is real—but the world will not end if it does. the song’s central motif implies paranoid hysteria.

there is also the latin maxim fiat justitia ruat caelum, let justice be done though the skies fall. i go back and forth on whether i think the writers specifically have that in mind, in relation to this motif, but: “it’s important not to lose sight of what drives us—love, justice, reverence” and “in pursuit of a new world, no cost is too great.” fiat justitia, ruat caelum. that’s the salem perspective.

and i bring that up because of sacrifice:

Born an angel, heaven-sent Falls from grace are never elegant Stars will drop out of the sky, The moon will sadly watch the roses die In vain, Lost, no gain But you’re not taking me.

and

Show them gods and deities, Blind and keep the people on their knees. Pierce the sky, escape your fate, The more you try, the more you’ll just breed hate And lies. Truth will rise, Revealed by mirrored eyes.

with its similarly apocalyptic imagery (‘stars will drop out of the sky’/‘pierce the sky, escape your fate’) in relation to ozma and his task, and salem positioning herself in opposition (‘but you're not taking me’/‘truth will rise’)—fiat justitia, ruat caelum.

hence, ozma song.

‘the sky is falling’ is directly a dark mirror to ‘touch the sky’ but it’s also—i think more interestingly—a sardonic reflection on ‘until the end’ if one reads both songs as articulations of ozma’s perspective.

emotionally, ‘until the end’ leaves off here:

Love brings us dreams, But grief makes the heart burst at the seams. As light fills my eyes, I’ll picture me beside her, And pray that I’ll inspire, I promise I’ll be here until… …our story has been told. Til our bodies break down every door. Til we find what we’ve been looking for.

it’s a dream—a fantasy—ozma finding hope in this imagined scenario where he can be with salem again. i’ll picture me beside her.

and then she, uh. captures him:

Here comes another nightmare, Another fever dream. The horror just won’t stop, An endless scream, But this is not subconscious; We’re not imagining. We’re wide awake, This is reality.

lol.

‘until the end’ is very lovelorn and idealistic, and also fundamentally passive: though “desperate to make amends,” the promise ozma makes is to… wait. to do nothing. to hope for salem to make the first move.

and well. she does. this is what ‘the sky is falling’ is about, the collision of ozma’s romantic fantasies with the harsh reality of the situation.

Our world’s Lost without a soul. We’re losing all control, Not getting closer. Every day is just another dose of torture. Now we pay the cost. The race is lost, This nightmare’s Our real life.

points.

OSCAR: It should not be this hard getting people to just cooperate. OZ: And yet, it’s something I’m becoming increasingly concerned about.

this is what oz is worrying about all morning while the hound stalks oscar across mantle, how difficult it is to get anyone to “just cooperate.” because—contrary to the popular fanon—he is in fact still committed to his task and he does still, on some level, believe that remnant is damned and its people are missing something fundamental; his secrecy and manipulation, his guiding interest in silver-eyes and maidens and elevated ‘guardians’ and ‘symbols of hope,’ his all speak to his lack of true faith in humanity. and that traces back to what the god of light told him.

(since people love to cite ozpin’s commentary on ‘the story of the seasons’ as “evidence” that he’s abandoned his task by misinterpreting “I fear that if unrestricted magic use were possible, the results would be chaotic and catastrophic” to mean that ozpin thinks people are better off without magic rather than ozpin justifying his efforts to control the maidens; here’s part of his commentary on ‘the two brothers.’

Whether or not you believe in the Brothers, or in this story in particular, the underlying message still holds value: We are burdened with responsibility for our world, and we share a common destiny. Like the twin gods, we are intricately connected with one another, and if we can learn to work and live together, we can create things greater than the sum of their parts. Remnant survived the Great War, but while the four kingdoms now cooperate and coexist, our bond seems tenuous. We have a fragile peace, and in some ways, we are more divided than ever. Even if the gods aren’t real, even if they don’t return to judge us for our deeds, we should act each day as though they are arriving tomorrow. In the end, we will be the arbiters of our fates. We will either create a beautiful, peaceful world and live in harmony together or destroy ourselves and our planet, and the gods will judge what we have chosen.

in which he not only states his belief in his mandate and the inevitability of divine judgment outright, in plain terms, but also repeats the same fear he confided in salem thousands of years ago, that despite finding happiness or achieving peace, he worries that people are “more divided than ever.”)

thus: “our world’s/lost without a soul/we’re losing all control/not getting closer.” oz has become “increasingly concerned” about how hard it is to “get people to just cooperate.” and so “every day is just another dose of torture,” because, well…

To live free or die, it’s all the same. The enemy was right, there’s no reclaiming. In waves of shame, We’re desperate to make amends

…he knows salem is right. his task is impossible; things can never go back to the way they were. the old world, the world of the brothers, is gone and trying to reclaim it will achieve nothing but destroying remnant.

and yet he cannot bring himself to believe it, because to him this would amount to condemning the world, to admitting that remnant is broken and irredeemable and must be destroyed because it cannot be saved. to him, salem’s rejection of the mandate is horrifying—tantamount to a a declaration that nothing in the world is worth trying to save.

in her mind, rejecting the mandate is an act of defiance: remnant does not need to be saved because there is nothing wrong with it, and where he sees damnation, salem finds freedom. and that’s what ripped them apart.

‘sacrifice’ makes this point also:

Did the things you thought you should, All the things they said were good. All your faith in ancient ways Leaves you trapped inside a maze. […] Even with the lives you stole, Still no closer to your… goal.

that ozma’s faith in the god of light imprisons him in a futile, impossible quest because he can’t escape his belief that the world is broken, that salem’s freedom is really damnation. he achieves so much—he united the four human kingdoms after the great war and ushered in an era of unprecedented worldwide peace—and still, in ozpin’s own words, he sees only that people are “more divided than ever.”

the chorus of ‘the sky is falling’:

Better cover up your eyes, my friend, The sky is falling, Can’t outrun the ruin of our lives. Be prepared, we’re near the end, The final days are calling. Hold on now, The sky is falling down.

similarly echoes the motif of blindness that appears in ‘sacrifice’ (“close your eyes now, time for dreams/death is never what it seems” and “show them gods and deities/blind and keep the people on their knees”) and, more obliquely, in ‘until the end’ (“love brings us dreams/but grief makes the heart burst at the seams/as light fills my eyes/i’ll picture me beside her” -> the light is death, the light is love, love brings us dreams and death is never what it seems).

the first two lines of the chorus are also a direct inversion of ‘trust love’: “better cover up your eyes, my friend/the sky is falling” vs “trust love/and open up your eyes.” which is salient because ‘trust love’ is chiefly about ozlem; it’s in conversation with ‘sacrifice’ and ‘until the end’ and on top of the central motif of love restoring sight there is also, “if you could only open up a door/spread your wings and fly away from here/write yourself into a fairytale/all your problems would just disappear.” the you is ozma.

and that makes ‘trust love’ + ‘until the end’ + ‘the sky is falling’ really um, pointed foreshadowing:

All you have to be Is here in reality Leave your fantasy You’ll find the key To victory I know the dark’s returning And the fires of hate are burning But the lies can’t hide what’s true When love’s alive

in one sense ‘until the end’ is the fantasy and reality ensues in ‘the sky is falling’, but in another—deeper, more important—‘until the end’ is also the truth which ozma keeps hidden from himself, and ‘the sky is falling’ is the act of self-deception; better cover up your eyes, my friend, the sky is falling.

so all of this—all of it—this is the false narrative oz has constructed about himself and salem, his blindness:

A curse that’s Never-ending This path with No escape No sudden death We’re trapped In slow decay These words are Not symbolic The torment’s All too real Eternal enemy Our fate is sealed We slide Further down the hole The damage takes its toll Helpless and broken Failed to stem the Tide of pain The floodgates open Now it’s one more sin As evil wins And misery steals Our lives

notice too how this section of the song reflects darkly on the hope and longing expressed in ‘until the end.’

ozma let himself imagine a reprieve (“time falls away/but pain always finds a way to stay/the tears that you’ve shed/will find a tree to water/but only when you’re stronger”), which he now scathingly reminds himself is impossible: his curse is never-ending, there is no escape even in death, he’s trapped in slow decay, his fate as her eternal enemy is sealed.

he admitted to himself that he wished to make amends and for just a moment he let himself believe that he could (“and stare with pride into the face of fear/in our finest hour, i’ll be standing here/and should we fall to darkness/this power i will harness/i promise i’ll be here until the end”), and now he mocks himself for it: he has done nothing but decay, corrupted more and more with every lifetime as he becomes unrecognizable to himself; the damage takes its toll. helpless. broken. he can’t make the pain stop, he can’t fix anything, he can’t save either of them.

oz found enough courage and hope to crawl back out of his darkness and try, once more, to do the right thing—to make amends—and what happened when he tried? “i’m not upset that you left. i’m upset you came back.”

that conversation, oz trying to apologize and being told that he’d done wrong again, made a mistake again, happened at most an hour or two before the hound caught them. one more sin as evil wins, cue the chorus.

and then the song turns inside out. (pour one out for the terrible rap 😔)

Lost all my hopes And dreams Watch my life flash By in scenes And it seems there’s No soul on the Video screen But I’m green tryin’ To figure out what All of it means Staring at the casket Hoping to move past it Knowing things will Never be the same And that’s it Cold soaked as I stand in the rain Feeling nothing but pain Until I see you again

clears throat. not a metaphor. this is about the lost fable—ozma very literally watched his life flash by in scenes, narrated by jinn in ozpin’s own words, and then he retreated into isolation to think about it. not to brood or sulk but to reflect; he comes back with a very clear idea of what he did wrong and how he wants to change because he used that time to, well, try to figure out what all of it meant, knowing things will never be the same.

and that’s it?

this part of the song is an emotional echo of the regret and longing expressed in ‘until the end’; “love brings us dreams/but grief makes the heart burst at the seams/as light fills my eyes/i’ll picture me beside her/and pray that i’ll inspire” -> “cold soaked as/i stand in the rain/feeling nothing but pain/until i see you again” it’s the same idea.

that salem is his hope, his comfort. deep down in his heart of hearts ozma… wants to see her again. ‘until the end’ hints that it isn’t a coincidence that oz makes his hopeful return in the same hour that salem reaches atlas. here, too, “nothing but pain/until i see you again.” a flicker of hope. because the hound is taking them to her.

and then:

Feel the waves crash Loud and hard Oh God Lost control I think I’m gonna lose it All my sanity’s slipping away Oh Lord Press record I’d die without the music Each breath is closer To my death Except that which is, This life There’s none left Let my demons live on Through my legacy Study my pedigree I need therapy

he catches himself feeling that small glimmer of hope and freaks out. lost control, sanity’s slipping away. every breath is bringing him closer to death, oscar will die, his demons will live on in his next host, he needs therapy. why did he even think that?

where you seek comfort, you will only find pain. his heart knows that isn’t true, but ozma is still fighting tooth and nail to force himself to believe it; cue the chorus. better cover up your eyes, my friend, the sky is falling.

#ozma screaming at himself: the song

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sweetlullabyebye · 1 year ago

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moodboard: yo-han as the judgement of solomon and ga-on as icarus

#why did i do this? no idea #it all made sense in my head but looking at this i'm not so sure #gahan #lawful husbands #the devil judge #kim gaon #kang yohan #moodboard #trying my best :')#devil judge #probably click on this for better quality of picture bc rn it looks weird

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tinybaileaf · 1 year ago

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Fiat justitia, ne pereat mundus.

#text #art

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nemaliwrites · 1 year ago

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Last Line Tag Game

Thank you for the tag, @winterandwords!

Here's the last line I wrote from In Pursuit of the Uneatable:

And justice can only be served when those who obstruct it cease to exist anymore.

And here's the preceding section for context:

Enough! Stop wasting your time with these people and go find Ladybug and Chat Noir! Princess Justice laughs softly. “I don’t think so. You’ll get what you want once I get what I want.” That wasn’t the deal! “You know what they say, Hawk Moth,” she says. “Fiat justitia ruat caelum.” His only response is a growl, but she pays it no mind. Let justice be done though the heavens fall.

Tagging @tavina-writes, @hamsteriffic, @winterandwords, @panvampirething, and anyone else who wants to do it! If you see this, consider yourself tagged :)

#tag game #miraculous ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #princess justice #hawk moth #in pursuit of the uneatable #nemali writes

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urne-buriall · 1 year ago

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fiat justitia ruat caelum (let justice be done though the heavens fall), pt. i

my life is an everlasting solitude. we are all strangers to ourselves.

#our lights in ashes daily

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collapsedsquid · 1 year ago

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But all this is nothing to friend Proudhon. He wants “eternal justice” and nothing else. Each shall receive in exchange for his product the full proceeds of his labour, the full value of his labour. But to reckon that out in a product of modern industry is a complicated matter. For modern industry obscures the particular share of the individual in the total product, which in the old individual handicraft was obviously represented by the finished product. Further, modern industry abolishes more and more the individual exchange on which Proudhon’s whole system is built up, namely direct exchange between two producers, each of whom takes the product of the other in order to consume it. Consequently a reactionary character runs throughout the whole of Proudhonism; an aversion to the industrial revolution, and the desire, sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly expressed, to drive the whole of modern industry out of the temple, steam engines, mechanical looms and the rest of the swindle, and to return to the old, respectable hand labour. That we would then lose nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our productive power, that the whole of humanity would be condemned to the worst possible labour slavery, that starvation would become the general rule – what does all that matter if only we succeed in organising exchange in such a fashion that each receives “the full proceeds of his labour,” and that “eternal justice” is realized? Fiat justitia, pereat mundus!

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tanadrin · 2 years ago

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in fact, that the demiurges in ksbd do have extensive armies is pretty well established, though they don’t show up on-panel all that much. it makes sense: even a god-tier kung fu wizard can’t occupy an entire plane of existence by themselves, and you can only defeat an enemy army singlehandedly if you’re in the right place at the right time to square up with them--so you still need scouts and a military infrastructure.

what i think is also an interesting element of ksbd’s setting is that, unlike (say) vattu, the tendency toward certain structures of power is encouraged by the shape of the universe itself. it’s a universe built around magic kung fu powers, around a cosmology that has a central hub you can rule hundreds of thousands of parallel universes from, around mystical keys that make you a god-tier kung fu wizard, etc. and that adds an interesting question, a question that the world of vattu would deny the very premises of, which is how do you contest injustice in a world which seems primed to produce it?

jagganoth’s solution is “you destroy the world,” but that fiat-justitia-et-pereat-mundus logic is rejected by allison. there’s also a temptation toward fatalism; but fatalistic cycles of destruction is not only the nature of the history we are told at the beginning of the story, it is (if jagganoth is to be believed) part of the series of events that led allison specifically to be chosen as the heir. so it seems unlikely that the narrative is building toward an equivocal ending.

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oracleoutlook · 11 months ago

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Fiat justitia ruat caelum.

#Don't be amused #it's just the news

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infamousbrad · 2 years ago

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Fiat justitia ruat caelum

One of the most cynical slogans I've ever read was in Niven & Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer, where the running theme of the whole back half of the book is "a society has the morality it can afford." I'm more of a "let justice be done, though the heavens fall" kind of guy myself. But I know my position isn't popular.

People are starting to ask if progressive prosecutors even can prosecute crimes. And you know what, maybe, compared with the right-wing and centrist prosecutors, they can't. But only because what the other prosecutors were doing, and getting away with, wasn't even vaguely legal. I'm not sure how much the average person knows (or cares) just how much our criminal justice system depends on coerced guilty pleas to keep prosecutor and court backlogs manageable.

Until this wave of progressive prosecutors came in, "innocent until proven guilty" just plain didn't exist. Anywhere else (or here, before) if the police arrested you, and you couldn't afford a good, expensive criminal defense attorney you were just plain guilty, period.

Your sentence began immediately. The Constitution says that bail can't be denied unless the prosecutor can affirmatively prove, by preponderance of evidence, that you are a dangerously likely to hurt people, abscond, or tamper with the evidence. That's too much work, they just set high six-figure bail -- which is also illegal under the US Constitution.

But having already started your sentence, the prosecutor's office is in a great position to start negotiating your guilty plea. And if you're stuck with an over-worked public defender, they'll tell you that right up front: you were guilty the second the police arrested you, we're just here to negotiate your time. If you plead, you serve the minimum sentence. If you insist on your innocence, there will never be a trial, the prosecution can and will postpone until you've served the maximum sentence, then they'll drop the charges.

My hometown, and a few other US cities, saw really high profile cases of people who were later proved objectively innocent who were held without trial for years, and others who were later proved objectively innocent who were coerced into guilty pleas, so we elected prosecutors who would actually run the office the way the US Constitution requires.

But that means either spending the hours (that they don't have) for each person arrested to prove that it's unsafe, or else letting them go free until trial like the US Constitution demands and the cops hate that. If it turns out they weren't safe to release, so does the rest of the public. And if they don't re-offend while out on bail, the prosecutor still has to actually prove the case as the US Constitution requires which can easily take so long that the deadline to try them expires, and the charges have to be dropped. The office doesn't have 1/20th of the budget it would take to actually try all of those cases.

So it's become clear that other prosecutors aren't (necessarily) asking (too compliant) judges to sentence people who've never been tried because they're mustache-twirling villains or even because they're cop-sucking bootlickers (necessarily). Maybe it's because if they don't, at least 19 out of 20 guilty people will go free. And 100% of the innocent people, yes, but that's not the point, they'd say.

The framers may have said that it is better that 10 guilty men go free than that 1 innocent man be punished, and that may be with the Constitution requires. But letting 10 guilty men go free rather than punish 1 innocent man is about as popular as a turd in a punchbowl. So if we can't afford to staff a prosecutor's office (and a public defender's office) that can take all these cases to trial, they'd say screw the constitution, screw the law: punishment first, sentence later, trial never. Because a society has the morality it can afford.

Not me. I say fiat justitia ruat caelum: let justice be done, though the heavens fall. Because unlike a lot of the voters, I can all too easily imagine it happening to me.

#local elections #st louis missouri #progressive prosecutors #criminal justice

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