A Ramble in St.Pauls court

One topic that comes to mind when considering these issues of reality and perception is the topic of criminal trials. In our adversarial legal system we have a prosecutor who represents the state or the county or the federal government, generally speaking us, and then we have the defense attorney who represents the defendant. Both the prosecutor and the defense attorney offer their version of the events. From their version of the events either the judge or the jury have  to decide if the person is guilty. In this system we have at least two version of reality and someone decided which version of reality will go down in the record was what is considered reality. It is interesting because this occurs always in retrospective and has to meet certain guidelines to be considered reality. In certain cases we might not only have a charge of lets say murder 2 but also have manslaughter 1 and 2, not only does the jury have to decide which version of reality is true but also how to define that reality. What really interests me here is that we create an entire system in which we define reality and based off that we also alter what happens to people, often for the rest of their lives. For most of the procedures in this system people are asked to remove themselves from their emotions and have a very brain in a vat kind of experience, where they examine the facts and apply them to a set of specific definitions so say if in reality what happened was selfe defense, or murder or manslaughter or in some cases if there is any link between the person and the case being presented. However this separation of the person from their emotions or prejudices or ideas can not be truly completed, therefore we recognize a concept of jury nullification by which even people decide that even if the person is guilty they will still be found not guilty because the law is unjust. I find this whole system so fascinating because it entirely invented by us, at the very core of it we present two stories and from those stories we decide by a degree of consensus what we will consider to be reality. It is not like science or a social science or really any academic work because we can also really arbitrarily change these rules with enough time, or in case of jury nullification say the rules are bad and ignore them. However these rules have a very real impact on people who in certain sates might die because a group of that persons peers said that in reality they shot a police officer. Therefore often we have people not care about what really happend when they are facing trial, but care about how the result of the trial will impact their life, people plead guilty to avoid a harsher punishment. Yet when they plead guilty we in our societal record decide that what they said happened was what in reality happened. I know this is a ramble but I just think it is rather interesting how we can define reality in so many different ways.