Court at last

Moral justice and its opposite, the legal system

By Nury Vittachi

*

As I entered the courtroom, I saw a huge steel cage had been built to contain me. They were taking no chances. But as I followed other members of The Accused, I was shown to an uncaged seat.

            The fools! How easy it would be for me to escape using commonplace household items such as a grappling hook and an Apache AH64 military helicopter.

The court officer checking our identity cards had donned surgical gloves, to ensure that particles of evil from members of the criminal classes such as me did not touch her bare skin. The police, sprinkled around the room for decorative purposes, were lightly armed and would be no match for my superpowers.
*
But let me recap for a moment. Regular readers may recall that the police arrested me the other day. They put me in a locked cell without water to drink, food to consult or lawyers to eat. I went through various emotional stages: shock, horror, anger, dismay, sleep, resignation, indignation, sleep, hunger, thirst, claustrophobia, remorse, ranting, sleep and delirium.

And then, after 23 minutes, they let me out.

I decided to use this incident as an opportunity to observe justice in action.

My investigations revealed I had been arrested because my wife was excessively law-abiding. Every week, she drops one child at an after-school dance class on a quiet cul-de-sac in an industrial area. Most mothers simply hover in their cars on the road until the child emerges.

But being fervently law-abiding, my wife found one of dozen empty metered parking places, packed the meter full of money, and left the car there.

She emerged later to find that the illegally hovering mothers had left the scene un-molested while our car had been ticketed. Her crime? The metered spaces had been designated for vans, not cars, although there was no way she could have known that.

Most people would have been stung by the unfairness of it all, but she decided to pay the fine. She learned that the quickest way was to race to the nearest bank machine and transfer funds to the police account.

So she did. But she miss-typed something. The money never got to the police. It probably appeared in the bank account of some peasant in rural Laos or something.

The non-arrival of the funds caused the police computer to classify the owner of the car as a dangerous master criminal who must be immediately apprehended. And that’s how I ended up in jail.
*
Well, when my turn came to appear in the dock, I told the judge the story above. She was totally unimpressed, and fined me even more money.

I left the courtroom deep in thought. What a weird beast the legal system was. Set up to deliver moral justice, it has become detached from it, and now sometimes perverts it.

Still, I was a free man. I would appreciate the simple pleasures of life more from now on.
*
But when I arrived home, my wife had news: she’d received another motoring fine.

“But don’t worry, dear,” she said, cheerfully. “I paid it straight away. I used the bank machine to transfer money to the police account.”

If anyone sees a Laotian peasant checking his bank account and dancing for joy, just give him my best wishes, would you?

Comments

[fardel]

I was wondering where this money was coming from!
Thank you, I shall make good use of it.
You were in shock for going to court for parking ticket , but still want to make jokes on airports?!?!?

Hum

[Catherine]

Nury,

This would be funny if it weren't so, like, not funny. I assume it's a true story and if so, may the authorities be placed under parking-space arrest for all eternity.

It is Halloween all year round, now.

[David David]

I thought that half this stuff must be made up but having traced the parking ticket saga back through the various columns, I realize that it really is the 'diary" of mister Jam and all this stuff really happens. What's curious is that our "Humble Narrator" is only slightly wackier than the average person but gets into interesting situations and meets interesting people etc -parking in the wrong spot, making jokes in airports, meeting Bill Gates etc, there but for the grace of god et cetera. Long may you hover on the edge of trouble but never fall disastrously into it!!

[karuna]

very strange that someone should have been put in jail for non-payment of parking fine..especially a journalist like you.
Did you make any "jokes" when the HK Police send payment reminders ?

by the by, went back to the first post on this subject. Read comments about your father. Did a search on his book. Spend the weekend reading parts of "Emergency 58" online. The article is still relevant for all of us.

[Nury]

Thanks for the generous comments, guys, but actually my life is much more boring and mundane than most of you, I suspect. I make a humble living as a father-of-three who writes books and teaches other people how to write fiction. The occasional meeting with someone famous is a natural outcome of having a hobby as a journalist -- all reporters meet famous people from time to time.

But you know what's strange? The topics on this site which get the most reaction are either the ones which mention celebrity names, or the ones which are very mundane -- dealing with children or parking meters.

I guess we all live in two worlds these days -- the world conjured up by the media in which there are relatively few players but they are celebrities living their lives in the public eye, and our personal lives with small-scale family events filling our hours.

And David, you're right -- this diary isn't fiction. It'll probably turn into a book one of these days, and commentors will play a key part in it!

[fardel]

Raising 3 kids?
Boring, No way!!!
Unless you leave the house before they wake up and wait to return after they fall asleep.
Teaching?
Boring, No way!!!
Unless you teach with a Scotch tape,have your students locked up or thrown out for mis-speeching, or refuse to teach them humor.
Writing books,
Boring, No way!!!
Not this kind of books you are writing
Reading our comments?
Definiteley not boring!!
We hope