Someone murdered two Indian graduate students six years ago, and the Baton Rouge court’s inability to run a trial on the culprit between then and now points to a basic failure of the judicial system.
Major court cases don’t seem to echo a citizen’s right to a speedy trial — Trayvon Martin’s took more than a year to resolve, and the Supreme Court’s docket for October’s session takes up cases begun years ago.
Obviously, it’s difficult to process important cases in a timely manner, but grief shouldn’t have to last multiple years before official closure.
In the case of our graduate students, six years was enough time for the defendant to disprove the key witness’ statements on the basis of his drug abuse relating to potential poor memory, which meant nothing he said could be taken as true beyond reasonable doubt.
The witness claimed he was an accomplice in the murders and presented knowledge of one student’s injuries at the time of death, something only someone on the scene or part of the task force to investigate the killing would’ve known.
However, since the jury paid more attention to the witness’ admitted intoxication, in their minds this fact could’ve been fabricated or found out in another way.
So maybe the jury isn’t to blame – the system and society in which they work is.
This society includes the LSU student body, with our average turnover rate of four years, and a collective consciousness that forgets issues as large as a double homicide if it doesn’t stay in the forefront of a news cycle.
We live in a fast-paced, media-fueled world of ever-rotating scandals, and this trial remained buried under bureaucratic jargon and class assignments for most of us.
Somehow, none of us did our jobs as far as this trial was concerned. Until a former editor in chief mentioned it to us, no one in the newsroom brought up the legal aspects of an on-campus murder.
After reading the coverage, it seems like this case should’ve been simple, and maybe it would’ve been had the trial happened earlier.
But now that it is clearly complicated, we need to work to bring details to light.
This is an issue that requires community concern. The formerly accused haven’t been found guilty, so a memorial and posthumous degrees don’t quite cut it. These are nice sentiments, but they’re nowhere close to justice.
There is no DNA evidence, no other witness and the case is closed. This could be the end of the story.
But I don’t think it should be. Too many murders go unresolved to let this one lie.
This miscarriage of justice requires a further investigation to figure out what happened six years ago.
True, it has been a while since the murder, and due process is all the legal system can promise, but if the LSU community continues to demand answers, we can find them.
Through curious, interested numbers, we can force the truth behind this verdict.
Hopefully we can shed more light on the death of these two students.
And it probably won’t take six years for us to do so.
Megan Dunbar is a 20-year-old English senior from Greenville, S.C.