welcome October 20, 2003 Issue

Proven innocent

Steve Graham

My recent hearing in the Middlesex County fraffic court was not exactly the stuff of which prime-time legal dramas are made. Nor do I mean to brag about the fact that I was deemed "not responsible" for running a red light in the City of Cambridge, on June 20. Suffice it to say that I honestly felt I was innocent of the charge, and told the judge the truth to the best of my knowledge.

The real benefit of that episode probably wasn't the $50 ticket I didn't have to pay, or even the points that didn't go on my driving record. It was, I think, the fact that before I went to court, I saw the need to quit identifying myself and others as inevitable victims of state government and start adopting a more constructive, healing viewpoint. That idea was an answer to prayer.

Compared with Rick Walker's 12-year incarceration for a crime he didn't commit, discussed in our lead article, my experience was a trifle. But maybe we need such moments—to appreciate just a little bit better what it meant for Walker to maintain his innocence in a maximum security prison, and then to be forgiving of his accusers. His life is a testament that no person, no circumstance, can separate us from God or from the pure and good identity He has given to all of us.

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