Occasionally, we all come across a feel-good story in which an individual charged, convicted and imprisoned for a crime is released because evidence is uncovered that proves the individual did not commit the crime.
We rejoice with the individual, profess our thanks for technology available to assist in that proof and feel sad that any individual had to serve time for a deed the individual did not do.
Judge Brett Kavanaugh is still in "prison" over a crime he says he did not commit, and he has no way to escape it. Not through a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Not through a committee vote. Not through a Senate vote. Not through potential years of service on the United States Supreme Court.
He has no way to prove his innocence. He has only his word that he did not assault a fellow teenager more than 35 years ago on an unknown date in an unknown house at an unknown address.
Kavanaugh's accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, evidently had something traumatic happen to her in that general time period. She is unable to summon many details about the event, and all the people who were there say they don't recall any such event occurring. But she remembers that Kavanaugh was her perpetrator.
In her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, she not only didn't recall the simple details one would need to have to trigger a police investigation from the incident, she also didn't remember dates and decisions she has made in just the past two months regarding her momentous determination to accuse the Supreme Court nominee of an assault.
But Ford's testimony also revealed that she apparently was unaware Judiciary Committee members had offered to come to her California home and take her testimony or meet her at a place of her suggestion, a fact that had been revealed publicly. In addition, it showed that her purported fear of flying to attend the hearing did not preclude her from frequently flying all over the country and the world. Sadly, it appears she was as used by her lawyers as she was by the Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee.
In the eyes of many who watched her testimony, though, her mere presence both displayed her courage (true enough) but also truth.
But it's not that easy, nor should it be.
Despite the verbal gymnastics of Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer saying before the hearing there is no presumption of innocence or guilt for a nominee, what future nominees would want to sit before such a panel with the understanding that they may be presumed guilty?
Kavanaugh, though, already was in the wringer and had only his good name to salvage.
Thus, like the innocent prisoner he proclaimed to be, his testimony was impassioned, angry, tearful and, yes, a little resentful. Just as with Ford, in the eyes of many who watched, he displayed both courage and truth.
When it was all said and done, observers were left with little new information. Either you believed her, or you believed him. There was no middle ground.
Although many Republicans already had said they would support Kavanaugh and many Democrats said they wouldn't, what was left for those who hadn't decided, it seems to us, were the same tools investigators must use. What does the evidence say? What do the eyewitnesses say? What does history indicate?
Well, after 35 years, there's no evidence, and history has not found the nominee to be a serial rapist or anything but an upstanding individual. The eyewitnesses? They can't corroborate Ford's story.
As several former prosecutors noted following the testimony, they wouldn't be able get an indictment based on the information available. Indeed, they couldn't even get a search warrant in order to obtain evidence based on the lack of accurate information. This would be a case, they said, that would never see the light of day.
But determining what really happened has never been a critical factor in this sordid episode. And it's made Ford a victim twice, first in whatever happened to her so long ago and second as a pawn by Judiciary Committee Democrats. It's been politics, pure and simple. It was nothing but an effort to keep a nominee off the Supreme Court who might one day provide a vote to reverse the 1973 high court decision that gave women the right to abort a child in their womb.
Indeed, as Sen. Lindsey Graham said in the Judiciary Committee meeting Friday, "This has never been about the truth."