A Bouquet of Flowers
Crime and Punishment in 2021, Justice & the Shadows of Plato’s Cave
A recent Netflix documentary spurred me to re-think the correct practice of law. Something pondered since the days of “Plato’s Republic”. Anglo v French? How do you define a just man? What is justice? What is reality, the Shadows or the Real thing? And if we’re living in the shadows of reality, are we in a position to uphold justice?
The Shadow
The documentary is called “Sophie: A murder in west Cork”.
The story is about a young French girl named Sophie Toscan du Plantier who married an award-winning director and artist, yet moved to the small, coastal town of Schull, at the western tip of County Cork to get away from all of the spotlight.
She was a part of the upper crest of French society. She was then murdered in the mountain, overlooking that town by an ego-maniacal English ex-Pat named Ian Bailey, who was a journalist, who couldn’t really make it in England, so he decided to try his ‘luck’ in Ireland.
Throughout the documentary, there were plots and twists and if I had to grade the documentary, I’d give it an A. They were able to, for better or for worse, have the actual murderer on camera, right in front of your eyes, in the year 2021. As I write this, Bailey walks free; an urchin slithering in the very streets of his murderous acts.
Which is the crux of the issue. This man is walking about as if nothing ever happened, reciting his crude, and honestly terrible poetry in the town center.
When all of the dust had settled, and it became clear that Ian Bailey, in my humble opinion, did in fact kill a beautiful young French woman, who simply came to Ireland searching for all the beautiful, poetic, romantic things that the Emerald Isle has always offered, I was appalled.
I was expecting there to be yet another twist. I was expecting the documentary to get you to think and believe that it was Ian Bailey, but alas! it was the older, potentially jealous husband all along.
It hits home, for my favorite poet is William Butler Yeats.
But I really did have to put my affinity for Ireland aside, because here is, who I and most people, including the French judicial system have judged Bailey to be the murderer of Sophie, who wasn’t just a beautiful young woman, but a loving mother, wife, and daughter.
Under Irish law, they couldn’t prove, without a reasonable doubt, that Bailey did in fact commit the murder.
But when you add to the fact that this is a small town, and in its living memory had never seen a crime like this; the small bits of knowledge, that would have been useful pieces of information, turned into an ever-growing and complicated puzzle for an overwhelmed Gardé, (Police in Ireland), who was struggling to put it together.
The irony is, that from the get-go, the local Gardé suspected that it was indeed Ian Bailey. There was a witness who spotted him at a bridge about 500 feet from Sophie’s house.
Bailey was also a talker. He liked the spotlight. He yearned for it. He came to Ireland and got exactly wanted it would seem.
He would invite locals over for dinner, and he would get drunk. Drunk to the point where we would literally confess. Repeatedly. Confessions that the French would refer to as a “bouquet”. Enough to convict him of murder.
Brings about the classical Irish notion of forgiveness, and the notion of keeping to one’s self, which one could say is rooted in some of the principles of Catholicism.
When applied to a situation like this, the immediate, subconscious response is well yes, he did confess to me, verbatim, but; “what if he was just drunk, and what if we go to the Gardé and tell them when he is actually innocent?”
Catholic confession — all wrapped into one crime?
More than 30 people would, in the months and years after the murder come to the Gardé and admit that they had indeed, with their very own eyes and ears, see and hear Ian Bailey confess.
Before Ian Bailey was an announced suspect, he was, in fact, writing articles that pointed the finger at Sophie’s husband, and others across the channel in France.
Using what he would consider his brilliant hand at writing to direct the attention elsewhere — in stark contradiction to the elegance and beauty of Yeats, Byron, and the Irish poets and authors of years past.
Crime and Punishment
He could do all of that and more but…some say — that guilt alone is the punishment for the crime — and Ian Bailey will have to carry that along for the rest of his life.
“Because he is human, he suffers guilt, and hence, cannot get away with his crime. He is not as good at being bad as he believes.” — Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment.
Further, under Irish law, you are only able to detain a suspect twice, and each time you do, you only have 12 hours to get a confession. Without hard evidence, this becomes very difficult.
In addition, the final call does not fall under the purview of a jury, but under one man, called the DPP, or Director of Public Prosecutions.
It made me question the fundamental concepts of conventional Anglo-Irish-American law, which differs greatly from that of the French. (or does it?)
Here, in the States, we practice an identical standard of Law, that is practiced from England and Ireland to Australia, where the crux is: to convict someone, the punishment is handed down via a jury and/or a judge, who must find a conviction for the crime beyond a single reasonable doubt.
“If the glove doesn’t fit, you must convict” — Johnny Cochran’s closing statement to the jury during the People vs O.J. Simpson case.
The fundamental premise being: If a guilty man walks free, we can live with that, but an innocent man should never be found guilty.
Seems simple doesn’t it? But there is beauty in simplicity. And, this concept of justice has held its own since the days of ‘King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table’.
The legend of King Arthur forces him, and us, at some point, to ask the following question:
Is the trial of crime and punishment predisposed towards proving innocence or guilt, or in other words, Guilt is assumed and innocence has to be proven? or Innocence is assumed and guilt must be proven?
In France, you simply must have “Un bouquet de fleurs” or a bouquet of flowers (of evidence).
This is an analogy for having ascertained enough evidence, hard (DNA, Text messages, murder weapons, etc) or circumstantial (testimony, eye witness, character perception, prior history) that outweighs one side of the argument.
I imagine a balance, and if the balance is heavy enough on one side, well, under French law, you are either guilty or innocent.
Now, it was only until the last episode that I began to find myself agreeing with the French style of law because, in the back of my mind, I remember scenes from “Catch me if you can” — where Frank Abagnale Jr. (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) is held in a dark, musky, inhumane French jail cell. There is really no point of return. There are appeals, but from the rough knowledge I have about the French judicial system, that is most often in vain.
It also makes me think of “Les Miserables” — and the injustice we all saw in that movie.
The scene where he literally commits suicide — from the guilt that he presumes to have, yet all he did was steal a loaf of bread.
In some way, it connects back to Christianity and the morality there.
The concept of sin. It is interesting to me that France is predominantly Catholic, and so is Ireland.
If I didn’t know better, I would reckon that the two countries might sway in the same direction.
If I didn’t know better, I would also reckon that Ireland — after years of British subjection, crime, and punishment, would have gone the other way. Perhaps, simply, to not be like the British.
I’m being cheeky but a bit like how the USA refuses to have a King, or more trivially evolved Cricket into Baseball.
The French also make me think of Nobles Oblige (The Obligation of the Nobility), Vive Le révolution & Vive Le Liberty. They seemed to have always been in search of absolute individualism with the conflicting idea of the noble, upper class.
You can chop off as many heads as you want but you still have many Counts, Dukes, and Duchesses in France. Think of Vichy-France in World War 2 — who were allied with the Axis, mainly the Nazis.
Whatever our notions are of the French, their intentions are (generally) good, as are ours, although corruption will exist all long as we do.
I’m not the first, nor the last to think about this — and likely, one of the main intents of that true-crime documentary series is to make you think of these things.
Franco-Irish Relations
An outcome of this tragic event is that it was one of the first times in modern history where there was communication, of actual consequence between France and Ireland.
France asked that Ian Bailey be extradited, 23 years after the fact, to Paris, where he would be prosecuted under French law.
The Irish refused. The Irish DPP of County Cork had made his judgment, and could not say that Ian Bailey was guilty without a reasonable doubt.
The French conducted the trial anyways, with Ian Bailey sitting safely in Schull.
The son of Sophie Toscan du Plantier had grown up, from a grieving boy to a man seeking justice for his mother. And he was no slouch.
Having deep pockets and strong connections certainly helped.
He was not about to let this man get away with the murder of his mother.
If I was in his shoes, nor would I.
The French judicial system found Ian Bailey guilty of the murder and sentenced him to 25 years to life in prison.
They once again asked for extradition from Ireland. Ireland again refused.
If he ever decides to go to France — he will be arrested, charged, and thrown in jail.
This leads me to the next train of thought which circles all the way back to Plato.
Justice
Paraphrasing Plato, Justice exists for itself and by itself. The person he is conversing with says justice does not exist for the powerful, justice exists for the common man.
So each man he converses with is trying to, in essence, justify justice.
Plato asks, that when everything is invisible, will you still ensure justice?
He questions every line of thinking, for that is what Plato does. He questions everything.
Justice, in Plato’s time, means defending your people — and defending them against other people. The concept of love for one's own. Whether it be Athens or Sparta.
Conversely, Machiavelli would simply say that if you define goodness — through the Catholic idea of “turning the other cheek”, or Catholic confession — your society becomes weak. He saw this in the degeneration of Florence and in his displeasure, said, in essence, we must return to the ideas of Ancient Greece and Rome, who did not respect weakness in any form, rather they respected the ideas of strength, law, and warfare. Law being defined by protecting one's own.
If you idealize being gentle, then you will open yourself up to be conquered, in whatever form that may be.
For example, Plato poses this question: Is a spy a just man? A man capable of blending in with the enemy to steal their secrets, and therefore is a very good liar and a cheater. What happens to this man in peacetime? Is he still just?
Is there some arcane connection between the Irish community, rooted in Catholicism, and Machiavelli’s warning? The Irish community being the ones who knew all along that it was Ian Bailey, yet turned the other cheek until guilt persuaded them to admit their knowledge to the Gardé.
Was Ian Bailey the conqueror, and was this quaint, trusting, west Irish town the ones being conquered?
If you worship the winner, as opposed to the underdog — then you are a stronger society, Machiavelli would argue.
Christianity and the Abrahamic religions argue on the other side.
Take David vs Goliath for example.
Reality & The Shadows of Plato’s Cave
Plato said we’d been brainwashed by Homer to respect Gods who are capable of being corrupt. If you worship Gods that are perfect then you are less likely to be corrupt.
So now I’m looking to Plato’s cave.
A bunch of people are sitting in a cave with their backs turned to the wall, and they can only see the shadows.
The shadows depict real things, in the real world, like statues and trees and so forth.
The shadows become these people's reality and they argue, debate, and discuss these shadows, for they perceive them to be the reality, almost like we have started to do with television and arguably what I am doing while writing this piece. (A smirk comes across my face, possibly laughing at myself, as I aim for a conclusion)
In a world of shadows, they’re doing all the things we would normally do. People are trying to get a promotion, get elected into office. People will commit crimes and people will try and uphold punishment through the way they interpret justice.
In summary, it is all the stuff we work for and do in our reality, today.
Now, what if you take one of these guys and take them to see the reality? Well, he initially is unable to handle it. From shadow to reality, and vice versa nobody can handle it, Plato says.
When a man who has seen reality comes back, he will be incompetent, he will no longer be able to play the game his old buddies had been playing.
Is he better or worse for it?
It’s a bit like coming back from college, only to realize you have nothing in common with your high school buddies anymore.
It was in writing that very sentence that I thought about ‘the Giver’.
My millennial counterparts will surely see parallels between ‘the Giver’ and ‘Plato’s Cave’.
Maybe our education system isn’t broken after all.
The Giver is a book, read by almost everyone in the United States, through the high school curriculum, that tells a story almost identical to that of Plato’s Cave — with some obvious nuances.
It’s funny how one little documentary series would get me thinking about the Shadows of Plato’s Cave, and The Giver, which I realize now is a modern interpretation of the ‘Cave’. Or maybe the author wrote that story without any clue about Plato’s Republic. After all, reading Plato’s Republic is no easy task.
Perhaps, the shadow was the documentary, to begin with, because what is a documentary other than a reflection or a shadow of what once happened?
So, after many coffees, and a few whiskeys, I still haven’t answered the question I initially set out to answer.
In summary, I bring all this up because if we’re all looking at a reflection of reality, and not reality itself, how are we in any position to uphold the fundamentals of justice in the first place? Whether it be French, Anglo or otherwise?
What say you?
Yours Truly,
Roh K.
