David Thomson
2007-10-28 06:39:10
A prosecutor can almost always find some half-baked reason to indict an individual. Traffic cops, for instance, have long joked that they can ticket anybody if they watch them closely for five miles. Everybody is intrinsically a law breaker. And no, I’m not exaggerating. The spirit of the law must dominate, not the strict letter—or civilization will collapse. We will return to savagery. Human laws often contradict themselves and some are still on the books even though they have been ignored for years. Why did the Russians decide to prosecute Mikhail Khodorkovsky? Was it truly legitimate—or just an excuse to harass a “trouble maker”?
