So, sometime yesterday, I was surfing through Facebook when I stumbled on a clip from Game Of Thrones, and it was the iconic scene where Tyrion was on trial for the murder of King Joffrey. Anyone who has watched the GOT series knows for a fact that the trial is easily one of the most iconic scenes of the entire movie because the acting in that particular episode was on point. Everyone nailed their roles right down to the T.
Watching it again after all this time brought to mind a lot of emotions and feelings I felt when watching it for the first time. I knew just how lonely Tyrion would have felt when it seemed like everyone in the seven kingdoms was out for his head and his sister Cersei had manipulated things so that no matter how it went, he would emerge guilty. I saw then just how little merit the word of an accused held, especially when everyone he knew had turned against him.
So, that scene got me thinking, I couldn’t help but compare that period to our time. Because for as long as there have been societies, there have been trials. There has always been a way to punish criminals and give them a fair trial. Most of the time, the punishment was death by hanging, or if it was a more vicious crime, it could be a stiffer punishment that still ends with the culprit dying though.
What I’m trying to say is that people back in the day had it really bad. They didn’t have CCTV cameras to track down everyone’s movements, there were no phones so that just about anyone could record a crime and use it as evidence. There was no forensics to lift fingerprints off crime scenes or find DNA to get the culprit. Today, it’s even easy to dismiss a case against you without even getting to court just because right off the bat, you’ll know it has no merit.
However, back in the day, all they had were the words of the people involved. If no one saw, then no one spoke. Only eyewitness testimonies could count. So, people will testify to watching you commit the crime, and if no one saw you do it, others will testify to how you talked about committing it or talked about how you hated the victim. And then, if something that’s known to be yours gets found on the crime scene, it’s as good as a slam dunk. Especially if you don’t have a good explanation for how it got there.
So you can see how easy it was back in the day to frame someone? As in ehn… there used to be trials because people were accused of being witches, and many people lost their lives as a result. All you have to do is say you saw or heard something, and that can be the final nail in the coffin of the accused.
But then, so many centuries later, are we any better? Yeah, it’s a lot harder to frame people now, thanks to technology and a system of investigation. Yet, people are still getting framed. The court system still relies on eyewitness testimonies even though there has been research that describes it to be unreliable. So many people are in prison either for something they didn’t do or something they were framed for, did the technology help them out there?
No, instead we have people who have simply mastered the system and used it to their advantage. Just as all those centuries ago when people used the system to get rid of whoever they wanted. So, even though the times have changed, even though civilization has become global and the world has become nothing more than one big village… we have cutting-edge technology that gets even sharper with every year that goes by, soon, there might be technology that can recreate and simulate the exact way a crime was committed. Down to the specs of the culprit and the victims. That’s if it doesn’t exist already. All I’m saying is that the world has changed so much since the old days, but for some reason, humans are still the same.
We still lie and we still set each other up. We’re still selfish, which is why we still lie and set each other up. It’s just sad really, because nothing has really changed. At least now, we have a better chance of telling our stories and defending ourselves. Finding evidence is not so hard anymore because it can come from anywhere at all. Okay, maybe some things did change.
Either way, I just hope that with time, things will go well for the human race. While everything about the planet seems to progress, we’re not doing such a good job when it comes to our relations with each other. I don’t even know if this is something that can ever be fixed.
But then, humans are full of surprises. So, we can only hope.
