Justice, Injustice and Karma

Mar 13, 2016 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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By Dennis Nichols

Having read the incredulous defence a Saudi millionaire gave for raping a teenager last year made me consider what a taxi driver said about how 17 prisoners may have met their death ten days ago.
Human behaviour is complex; unpredictable at times, and the way some people think and act under certain conditions reflect this. I don’t envy those, who as professionals, are called on to judge and convict others based on circumstances that involve journeying into the mind and motives of persons accused of wrongdoing.
In the case of the Saudi millionaire, 46 year-old businessman, Ehsan Abdulaziz, was accused of raping an 18 year-old girl at his flat in West London, England. He had taken her and her 24 year-old friend there in his Aston Martin luxury car (Sean Connery drove one in ‘Goldfinger’) after a round of drinks at an exclusive nightclub. They had more drinks at his apartment before he took the older woman into his bedroom for sex. The younger one fell asleep on a sofa. She said she awoke later to find the businessman on top of her, raping her.
In his defence, Abdulaziz gave the court two bizarre but similar explanations of what may have happened. He disclosed that he had noticed the young woman sleeping in an uncomfortable position when he went to switch off the TV, so he got her a T-shirt to sleep in. He explained that as he tried to give it to her, she pulled him towards her in an effort to seduce him. He added that he tripped and fell on top of her and his penis, which was poking out from his underwear, might have accidentally penetrated her. He thus blamed her for her own alleged rape.
Putting a twist on that explanation, he added that there may have been semen on his hand from his earlier encounter, implying that his finger, not the other culprit, could have accounted for his ejaculate being found in the young woman’s vagina. (Those explanations remind me of the reasons some Guyanese women used to give for being admitted to the notorious ‘Slip and Fell’ ward of the Georgetown Hospital)
Yet is it possible (though improbable) that the businessman is telling the truth?
If you read about the behaviour of some young women, and men, in England when they go to certain nightclubs and ‘rave’ parties, you would realize just how permissive some of them are, and how susceptible they become to sexual excess. In this instance, a jury deliberated for 30 minutes before clearing Mr. Abdulaziz of rape. Incredible!
In the other situation, the taxi driver opined that a couple of ringleaders must have instigated the fatal fire in a locked building with the certainty that prison warders, or somebody, would have been forced to unlock the doors and free the prisoners rather than witness their immolation. Then, according to him, they would have attacked en masse, overpowered the guards, and done something that would have made the 2002 jail break seem tame by comparison. He further implied that the warders at that point used commonsense instead of compassion. It sounded like a piece of ‘Dem Boys Seh’ satire.
Whether true or not, can the families of incarcerated or dead men sue a prison for not ‘protecting’ those under its charge in such a scenario? Some prisoners’ relatives seem to think so. But if the taxi driver’s opinion has some merit, where should the line be drawn between empathy and possible anarchy in that kind of environment? If such issue arose, would the courts or a commission of inquiry even consider the possibility that the prison guards may have allowed poetic justice/karma to have its way? Both victims and offenders have rights, you know.
There are actually a few cases where an injured party or potential victim is sued by the alleged perpetrator of some illegal or unfortunate action; sometimes successfully. For example a thief may be awarded monetary compensation if, while burgling your house, he falls down your broken stairs and breaks a leg. In fact in the United States in 1982, 19 year-old Rick Bodine, while attempting to burgle a school, fell through the building’s skylight and became a quadriplegic. He sued the institution and was awarded $260,000 plus $1,200 a month for life.
In another British case, a guy named Gilbert wrote himself an 845-pound cheque, forging his employer’s signature. He was promptly caught and marched down to the police station by his boss, a Mr. Cremer, carrying a piece of cardboard stating ‘THIEF! I stole 845 pounds; am on my way to Police Station’. Shamed and humiliated, he later sued his boss for lost wages, trauma, and mental damage. And won! Cremer had to pay him 13,000 pounds – fifteen times what he attempted to steal.
Some cases are more amusing than amazing and are dismissed outright. In 2002, a man filed a $2,000,000 suit against the hospital where he was a patient, for failing to prevent him from raping another patient. A woman, who caused the death of a man riding a snowmobile, sued his widow because of the ‘psychological shock’ she suffered from witnessing his death. And a Californian lawyer sued Verizon for $100,000 for listing his name in its Yellow Pages under ‘Reptiles’ only after a number of bad jokes and rude telephone calls.
So they say karma pays back injustice. One of the most riveting cases in judicial history seems to bear this out. When O.J. Simpson was freed for causing the deaths of his ex-wife and her friend in 1995, millions of people around the world were shocked. They say sneaky karma allows time to pass before she strikes. Two years later a court awarded $33.5 million against him for their wrongful deaths, and in 2008 O.J. was sentenced to 33 years in prison for several felonies including armed robbery and kidnapping.
Now ABC News is reporting that the former star athlete may be suffering from a degenerative brain disease, (CTE) from his pro football days, according to the doctor who discovered the malady that inspired the recent hit movie ‘Concussion’. Additionally he has a knee problem which needs surgery, and The Daily Mail quotes him as saying, “They don’t give a damn that I’m going to end up crippled … for the rest of my life.”
Karma enough? Yet ‘The Juice ‘still has his adoring fans who think he is innocent of any wrongdoing. For them, karma is mere circumstance. Could they be right?
Here in Guyana, some people are waiting to see if retribution will come to some of the ‘big ones’ who allegedly raped this country’s treasury, robbed and murdered its citizens, and killed national pride. Some say it’s already happening. Others are still looking out for it. Maybe a few of them are gazing out from the confines of Lot 12 Camp Street, still hearing the death screams, still thinking of justice denied; and still wondering just how real karma may be.

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