The notion that justice delayed is justice denied is ancient wisdom that can be found in the Bible’s book of Exodus. It is also found as early as 1215 in Magna Carta, and was demanded by England’s Lord Chancellor, Francis Bacon in 1617, a century later by William Penn, again in 1868 by the Prime Minister William Gladstone, and in 1963 by Martin Luther King in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
This list makes clear that justice is rarely delivered as fairly and promptly as desired. In Victorian England, Charles Dickens devoted an entire novel, “Bleak House,” to denouncing the failure of his era’s judicial system to provide swift justice. And in our time, the innocent are often still victimized by a justice system that proceeds too slowly. And, conversely, the guilty often manage to delay justice for as long as possible, to drag out cases, to make endless appeals, to obfuscate, dilly dally, and try to run out the clock.
Those less well off often lack the ability to delay a case from coming to court while individuals and corporations with great financial resources can put off court cases, delay trials, deploy phalanxes of legal professionals to make endless appeals to wear down the system, and avoid prosecution for months and years
The poster boy for such blatant abuse of the legal system in our time is Donald Trump. He faces one trial after another and has made a career out of delaying justice. From 1970 to 2016, Trump’s businesses were involved in 4,000 legal cases in state and federal courts and 100 business tax cases.
The list of Trump crimes include sexual harassment and sexual assault, a misuse of classified documents case is on the docket in May 2024 in Florida, a guilty finding in the E. Jean Carroll sexual assault case brought with a defamation charge and a fine of $83 million.
In 2023 Trump and his sons were fined $364 million for fraudulent over-valuation of assets. In 2024 the crime of an insurrection designed to steal the 2020 election and the conspiracy to defraud the United States will be adjudicated and could result in a penalty of 20 years in prison.
A plot to steal the 2020 election using fake electors may also lead to charges of electoral obstruction and criminal interference with an official proceeding in states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and New Mexico.
A classified document case is also scheduled for May 2024 in Florida. And Trump faces 34 felony counts before a Manhattan jury in March 2024 for falsifying business records and paying hush money to a porn star. The disgraced former president’s criminal plots cost the Republican National Committee two million dollars in attorney fees from October 2021 to July 2022, and many millions more are ahead for the trials scheduled for the rest of the year. Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. And how expensive it is to try to corrupt the working of a democracy.