Redefining assumptions

I cannot and will not discuss this situation in specifics, but it's too heavy on my heart not to write about it. Someone I love very much has gotten into trouble of a most serious kind. Many people's lives are being affected: reputations, health, finances, emotions. I have cried a lot, worried even more, slept very little, chewed at my nails, wailed and wanted to beat the wall with my fists and forehead.

The person in trouble is naive and gullible and fell for an entrapment established by over-zealous policing in a small town in an unsophisticated area. The lawyer feels sure that the charges will not stick, but meanwhile, various news sources (newspaper, internet, tv) have carried the story. The person I love has been damned: tried, convicted, hung, in the court of public opinion. The person I love was slammed into the ground face first (bloodying a lip badly). The person I love (who is an incredibly gentle and kind human being) was forced to share a cell with a murderer, someone who had cut off another person's head and driven around with it in a car. The person I love was frightened, traumatized, and treated like a mass murderer. The only crime committed by the person I love was of not openly expressing disagreement with another person online. This other person was trained to manipulate and entrap people into saying things that these people did not mean.

We all make stupid decisions. We all say things we don't really mean, simply to further a conversation sometimes. We all allow others to say things we disagree with, but by not openly disagreeing, our silence is interpreted as acceptance and agreement. This is what has happened to the person I love.

I do not know what will happen. I only know that the person I love is telling me the truth. I want to always respect the law and courts, but when a legal system goes out of its way to entrap people so they can charge them with heinous crimes (or intentions of committing these crimes, since no crime was committed), then my respect falls away to reveal something primal. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. There is a reason we have checks and balances. There is a reason our system is set up to emphasize that each of us is innocent until PROVEN guilty.