One of the episodes of the current best-selling Trump courtroom shows is coming to an end with the ruling on EJ Carroll’s defamation suit against the ex-President. The judge has awarded her $83.3 million to compensate her for the defamation she suffered.
The background of the story is that, Carroll, a former magazine columnist, alleged Trump raped her in a department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her when he denied her claim. Furthermore, an expert witness testified that it could cost up to $12.1 million to repair her reputation!
Now, I am no fan of Donald Trump, and have no qualms with EJ Carroll, whose name I had not even heard before this case came up. But this ruling, put side by side to another story makes me wonder about this American lawsuit/justice system.
I compare the story above to the story of a certain Richard Phillips, who was accused of and convicted for participating in a murder in 1971. He claimed his innocence and never lost hope. He was finally exonerated after spending 45 years behind bars, and walked a free man again at the age of 71 in 2018. Yes from the age of 26 to the ripe age of 71, he spent his days and nights in a prison in Michigan for a crime he had not committed.
I am not going over his story, which can be read over the media, but guess what? After a year of discussions, the state of Michigan compensated him for this wrongful imprisonment to the tune of ..... $1.5 millions! What is even more infuriating is that if you read the detailed story, you find out that the prosecution had a lot of shortcoming, and of course, Richard Phillips was a black man not in good overall standing with the system, and very little means and support to get a better lawyer.
So, how can I reconcile these two compensations: EJ Carroll’s for defamation damage of $83.3 million vs Richard Phillips’ 46 years of wrongful imprisonment compensated with $1.5 million? Ahhh, the impartial justice that decides, nevertheless, that a woman’s fame was worth 55 times more than a man’s 46 years of prime life wasted unjustly behind bars!
Paris, February 8, 2024,
Zeejay