It's Nice to See the World Finally Coming Around on Mr. Kraft's Fight for Justice

Jerry Thornton5/17/2019 5:15 PM

I’m typically not one to signal my own virtue. I’m one of those writers who doesn’t like to be part of the story. As a matter of fact, you’ll almost never catch me using the first person singular pronouns at all if I can avoid it. I prefer to be in the background, quietly telling the tales of others.

But I’ll break down that fourth wall for a moment and open up, just this one time. The whole Tug Rule saga has, at times, been a lonely journey. It’s not easy to be the one lone voice in the wilderness, crying out for justice. As you’ve no doubt heard by now, the path of the righteous man is beset on all sides with the inequities of the selfish, and the tyrannies of evil men.

Which is why I take comfort any time another voice in the world echos my call for fairness and equal protection under the law for all the men persecuted in this travesty. In this case, from the New Republic:

Kraft could have pleaded guilty, paid a fine, and put this episode behind him as quickly as possible. Instead, he refused a plea deal and waged an all-out war against the charges. … Kraft’s brush with the American criminal justice system is atypical, to say the least. That makes it all the more instructive. His case punctured some of the overheated rhetoric surrounding coerced sex work and highlighted the power dynamics that police and prosecutors often enjoy over defendants—not because it worked against him, but because it didn’t. …
“The men are the monsters in this case,” Marin County Sheriff William Snyder told reporters in February. At a press conference shortly after the raids, Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg suggested that the defendants might face additional charges for their connections to it. “Human trafficking is the business of stealing someone’s freedom for profit,” he warned. “It can happen anywhere, including the peaceful community of Jupiter, Florida.”
The narrative changed just as the public’s attention turned elsewhere. …
In an ideal world, every American would have access to the same level of legal defense that Kraft does. But many can’t afford any lawyer, let alone some of the best in the field, and they suffer for it. … For some Americans, it’s relatively easy to vindicate themselves in a court of law—to quash bad warrants and suppress bad evidence, to thwart overzealous prosecutors and defeat spurious charges before they even reach a jury. The only question is whether you can afford it.

Hear, hear, New Republic. In fairness to me, this is pretty much just saying what I’ve been saying since Minute One of this circus and the overcrowded clown car driven by Sheriff William Snyder and State’s Attorney Dave Aronberg. But again, I’m not here to talk about myself or how right I’ve been all along. I’m just happy to have someone else join me at my post behind the ramparts of liberty. Mr. Kraft and I need all the spears and shields we can get.

And this is well said. Mr. Kraft isn’t just fighting for himself. He’s fighting for all of us. Even if you’re one of those pure, without-sin, Holier-Than-Thou Puritans all full of indignation over the private handjobs of some men you’ll never meet. When the government is obtaining the “sneak and peek” warrants made legal in the Patriot Act to stop foreign and domestic terrorists to police orgasms, no one is truly free. Those are some tactics right out of the East German Stazi. The only difference is, we have courts where you can, as you’ve also no doubt heard, fight for your right to party.

Yes, it sucks that not everyone can afford to hire the best lawyers. No one said life is fair. But it should come as a comfort to us all that the one man who the Palm Beach County authorities thought would help make their careers just happened to be the one man who refused to take their abuse (pardon the pun) lying down. He stood his ground. And used his resources to fight back. He’s a billionaire who is looking out for the little guy who doesn’t have the means to protect himself. He’s Bruce Wayne, but with an even cooler plane.