The legal compass of the law cannot always accurately navigate through the inchoate map of human nature; and is often blind within the fine web of subtleties entangling human volitions and actions, truths and falsehoods. A criminal, in the sightless eyes of the law, is only a criminal if he has committed a crime according to the definition of the law, when proven.

The true needle of morality is the intuitive perception, which however has no legal weight of authority within the letter of the law, nor a clear line of communication with the intellect. Guiltless or not, it is up to the accused – or his legal defence team – to provide (or destroy) requisite proof. That’s how difficult, and easy, it is.

Humanity is, by choice, the legal prisoner of an approximation – one with which it has voluntarily entered into a compromise, for fear of having nothing better, nothing more exact. Thus our law will never apprehend every guilty person, while some of those it apprehends and condemns will be innocent.

All we are left with, in the end, are our intuitions and our perceptions; our sense of justice; and our longing for a better and more perfect humanity – a longing which we will pass on from generation to generation, like a torch in the dark.

– Che Chidi Chukwumerije.