Equal Justice

On Tuesday, Pro-Life Activist Lauren Handy was sentenced to four years and nine months in Federal prison for protesting at an abortion clinic. She was charged and convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. Nine co-defendants – Jonathan Darnel, Jay Smith, John Hinshaw, William Goodman, Joan Bell, Paulette Harlow, Jean Marshall, Heather Idoni, and Herb Geraghty – have already been sentenced or will be sentenced in the near future. What was their crime? Kneeling and praying at an abortion clinic, trying to persuade young mothers not to kill their own children. And now these non-violent protestors are going to Federal prison for years.

On the same day that Handy was sentenced to nearly five years in prison, Havard University agreed to reverse the suspensions of nearly two dozen anti-Israel and pro-Hamas protesters who had illegally set up an encampment on campus for weeks, disrupted classes and exams, and shouted antisemitic and genocidal slogans, such as, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Harvard caved and promised to meet with the activists to discuss the University divesting from Israel. This is where we have come to in America: If you call for the genocide of the Jewish people, your demands will be listened to, but if you pray to stop the systemic slaughter of 800,000 babies every year, you will be thrown into Federal prison.

These days, the only people who the American judicial system is throwing the book at are pro-life protestors, Christian conservatives, and Donald Trump. Everyone else can do whatever they want, and they will receive complete leniency. In Washington, DC, on April 22, 2024, at 2:30 AM, 18-year-old, Amonte Moody shot 26 rounds from an AR-15 into a car trying to kill the four people inside. He was arrested after a nearby doorbell camera captured footage of the attempted murder. On Monday, Judge Lloyd U. Nolan Jr. ruled that Moody be released on bail ahead of his trial. It is hard to get any more violent than trying to murder four people at once – only a sociopath would shoot 26 rounds into an automobile – yet he is given bail and walks free.

On Tuesday, six of the illegal immigrants charged in the vicious beating of two NYPD police officers in Times Square on January 27, were offered plea deals by the DA’s office of Alvin Bragg – the man who is prosecuting Donald Trump for a bookkeeping error. The six illegals are required to serve only one year in jail in exchange for pleading guilty to second-degree assault. The plea deal was still executed even though one of the illegal immigrant cop-beaters, Yohenry Brito, had been arrested again for larceny and criminal possession of stolen property while he was out on bail. A pack of illegal immigrants brutally beat up two police officers, and they get one year in prison, Donald Trump committed a bookkeeping error, and he is facing four years in prison.  

But none of this is new. We saw it back in 2020. For six straight months, BLM protestors/rioters burned sections of our major cities to the ground, killing over 30 people, injuring over a thousand cops, causing billions of dollars of damage, and most of the perpetrators were let out on bail and given a slap on the wrist, while the January 6 protestors/rioters who caused minimal property damage and killed no one, were thrown into the DC gulags and left to languish there for years. 69-year-old grandmother Pamela Hemphill, fighting breast cancer who trespassed in the Capitol for a few minutes was sent to Federal prison for two months.

Thomas Robertson, a former Virginia police officer and Army veteran, was sentenced to seven years and three months in prison for his actions on January 6. Robertson used a large wooden stick to block the path of officers who tried to stop the mob and destroyed his phone when he got home. As I wrote on January 7, 2021, everyone who committed a crime that day should be held to the full account of the law. But if Robertson was sentenced to jail for seven years, the six illegal immigrants who brutally beat up the two NYPD police officers should go to jail for 10 years, and then deported. The Harvard protestors should get the same punishment that the abortion clinic protestors got. The man who tried to murder four people should be sitting in a jail cell right now, but he walks among us.

Donald Trump mentions the possibility of withholding military aid to Ukraine in 2019, and he is impeached; Joe Biden actually withholds military aid from Israel that had been approved by Congress, and nothing happens to him. Donald Trump possesses classified documents at his home, he is being prosecuted and tried; Joe Biden possesses classified documents at his home, the DOJ does nothing. Barack Obama commits several bookkeeping errors during his 2008 Presidential campaign, he is fined $350,000; Donald Trump commits one bookkeeping error during his 2016 Presidential campaign, he is facing four years in prison. In 2000, Al Gore challenged the results of the Presidential election for over 2 months, trying to use “hanging chads” to find votes to overturn the election, and the media assists him in his pursuit; in 1960, John F Kennedy had his own set of electors set up in Hawaii, a state that had originally been called for Nixon, so he could challenge the election results in that state, and they declare Kennedy the winner; Donald Trump challenges the results of the 2020 election, he is charged with insurrection.

Equal opportunity and equal protection under the law are only two kinds of equality worth pursuing as a country because they are the fairest and freest concepts any government can employ. Sadly, we have done away with both of them. We have replaced equal opportunity with equity which means jerry-rigging the system to produce artificial equal outcomes based on race, gender and ethnicity. And now we have replaced equal protection under the law with artificially created legal outcomes to protect or destroy people based on their equity status. The longer we go down this road, the less chance we have to survive as a country.

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J Garrett is a graduate of Princeton University. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.