… And Justice for All, pt. 2

Note: this is an adaptation of an article by Mircea Toma, published in the weekly magazine “Academia Caţavencu“, issue no. 43, November 2-8 2005

A senator’s wife runs her fancy jeep on the opposite lane and bumps head-on into an incoming car. A young girl survives, but both her parents and her sister die on the spot.

The senator’s wife, unharmed of course in her big strong car, has been recently condemned for the accident she caused. She’s not going to spend one single day in prison, but she will pay the grandfather of the surviving minor girl a staggering amount of money as moral damage compensation: 30 million Romanian lei — a little less than $1000 ($968 or €827 by today’s rate). That’s something around $300 for each cross in the cemetery!

Two years ago a journalist wrote about a prosecutor’s abuses on the job. Whether he was right or wrong about that, it doesn’t really matter. He was sentenced to pay the prosecutor lady 300 million lei as moral damage compensation for calumny.

Another journalist wrote an article about some prefect. He was sentenced to pay the prefect 600 million lei as moral damage compensation for calumny and insult.

So to sum this up: in this country, a sucker’s life is worth less than a tenth of a wise guy’s ego!

Just one more: a young student gets 11 (eleven) years in prison for possession of one gram of some illegal substance (I think it was heroin, but I’m not really sure. It’s not even relevant). Ion Alexandru, son of well known tennis player and billionaire Ion Ţiriac, in spite of a lot of evidence and witnesses describing him as a dealer and heavy consumer of illegal substances, is of course cleared of all the accusations.

So the prototype for a Romanian judge is something like this: a filthy whore that gets all wet down there when it faces a senator, a prefect, or some other kind of local wise guy. They say they are reforming the Romanian Justice system… does anyone know how to transplant some balls to the fucking judges?

As a side note: a U.S. Navy soldier kills one member of a Romanian rock band in a car accident on the streets of Bucharest. He is proven guilty and gets 14 years of prison. Not in Romania.