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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 11 2013 @ 12:46 PM EDT |
to convict practically anyone of practically anything.
It is not necessary to prove, for example, that the "co-conspirators"
ever even met, not to mention that they actually ever planned anything. It
suffices, essentially, to prove a like-mindedness or to be able to point to
public statements which could be interpreted in such a manner.
Conspiracy, in the legal sense, is extremely elastic, and that is for a reason,
in fact: those who wrote the laws about it wanted it to be an instrument by
which the authorities could "get" those whom they did not like or whom
they found, in their wisdom, to be inimical to the interests of the state or the
"forces of established order." The legal accusation of conspiracy is
therefore most useful when absolutely nothing else can be made to stick.
Therefore conspiracy in the legal sense is not what you or I would necessarily
think it is.
Possibly, that is part of the problem?
Note that I am not saying any opinion about whether some people were actually
guilty of conspiracy (as we lay people would naively interpret the word) were
convicted here, or not. I am just pointing out that an accusation of
"conspiracy" and a conviction for same do not necessarily mean much in
relation to what normal people would think of as actual guilt. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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