By Jill McLaughlin 
A man hangs suspended from bars of his cell. His feet barely touch the floor, the cord used to tie his wrists digs in deeper each time he moves. Every muscle in his body twists and contorts. His blood is rushing and building in several places inside his anatomy – it is starting to clot. If this goes on much longer he will surely die.
He barely slept the night before as his tormentors allowed him only moments of sleep. They have done this numerous times before. The music will blare and blare until it is imprinted in his brain. Then it goes off and he falls to sleep – til the music soon starts again.
One eye is swollen shut from the thousandth beating. The other is wide open. It is the only window into his physical and emotional suffering – except for when he moves to try to get some relief. Then his mouth opens wide and contorts and he lets out a scream. That too tells a story.
A man with a stethoscope and a funny looking machine enters the cell with two other uniformed men. The uniformed men untie his cords and the prisoner drops to the floor. The man with the stethoscope hunches down next him and begins listening to his heart. He then places a cuff around his upper arm and begins to pump the cuff. It is squeezing the captive’s already tenderized muscle and he groans.
The three men only sneer at him. The man with the stethoscope and funny looking machine is finished listening and reading the vitals. And they leave him on the floor. He will sleep…for awhile. For awhile they will leave him alone and then this will start all over again. He is unaware that in other places, men like these three who have just left his have gone too far, and that other men like him are dead. Yes, he is unaware of this, as he wishes he were dead.
Half way around the world a man stands in front of a class room in a famous law school building.
He is unaffected by the man in the cell…unaffected by his suffering. He cannot be affected…he does not know him. Well, not in the way of knowing this man in the cell as an individual…a person who was living his life, loving and being loved before he was taken and stripped of everything that defined him before he became the man in the cell.
Because the man at the front of the class room knows of this man in the cell. He knows of many men in cells. He put them in these cells with his words. Words of justification. Words of legal justification. Words that allow…that authorize the 3 men and others like them to do what they do to the men in cells. The man in front of the classroom begins to speak…about the rule of law…the constitution. His conscience does not torture him…he cannot be affected by the men in cells. He does not care if they die or if they are kept alive to be tortured. How can this be?