Parading the accused and the condemned before the citizenry is an age-old tactic used by those holding power. The most famous example goes back some 2,000 years, when a Jewish preacher from Nazareth was forced to trudge painfully to Calvary. William Wallace, the Scottish independence leader, experienced it being dragged through London before his execution in 1305. French monarchists, during the revolution, endured it as well in the tumbrels carrying them to the guillotine.
That sort of public shaming has not disappeared, even if conducted in 21st-century America with less brutality. The modern version is known as a perp walk. As in days of old, a criminal suspect is displayed in front of a fevered crowd — composed now not of the howling masses but of camera and microphone holders pushing and shouting in sweaty pursuit of the best possible lens angle.
The article notes that in 1999 a federal judge in NY ruled that the perp walk was unconstitutional unless it had some "legitimate law enforcement objective or justification":
Judge Schwartz said the walk was intended to humiliate ... and had ''no legitimate law enforcement objective or justification.'' ...
The perp walk, though, seems almost certain to survive Judge Schwartz.
The author was right, of course. Intimidation and humiliation by the Leftist establishment will always be with us. In place of the "perp walk", behold: the SWAT raid in the hours of darkness!
