Ryan Fergusson

The day’s news reports on Ryan Fergusson, who was convicted of murder– without being connected to it by any physical evidence–because his friend began to have dreams that seemed to implicate him. The friend lied and confessed eventually that he’d lied, but it took time to get Fergusson out of prison, after he’d served 10 years of a forty years sentence. He was a teenager when all this happened. Of things which fill me with rage and the impulse of insurrection, this is near the top of the list. So far as I can tell, all cases of the imprisonment–sometimes the death–of the innocent are caused by prosecutorial misconduct. Cops lie. Prosecutors–as in Fergusson’s case–conceal evidence. Matters are rushed to a conclusion for the convenience of the court; confessions are wrung out of the innocent by Mordorian brutality. I believe that those implicated in the malfeasance– the lying cop, the devious prosecutor–should– without appeal–be forced to serve exactly the same sentence as their depravity caused the innocent. Ten years for those who put an innocent boy in prison. I doubt that these things ever happen by accident, and almost never relative to an honest mistake. Make me Pharaoh, somebody.