Guilty Or Not Guilty - Geographically Speaking

For my simple little mind, a crime is a crime, no matter who committed it, when, where or why. But I just learned that it's not always so. Geography somehow figures in the consideration and therefore the verdict. The court of Girona, the biggest city nearest Roses where I live, has just acquitted 2 youths of the crime they were charged with, trafficking drugs. They were caught red-handed some time back, with 50 grams of cocaine on them, facing a jail sentence of 6 years; also for a crime against public health. But they don't need to go to prison because the public prosecutor made a mistake charging them with trafficking instead of processing drugs. They had been able to prove this latter but not the former. This vaguely reminds me of that film "Pulp Fiction" in which John Travolta explained to Samuel L. Jackson, that he had been to Paris where the Big Mac of McDonald's was called La BigMac, and the Quarter Pounder was called "Royale with Cheese". In Amsterdam it is legal to buy, to have, to sell, to carry and to smoke marihuana, but it is illegal that a police searches you. To be detained but with liberty under charge is habitual in all Europe nowadays, greatly contrasting with the fate of the British man, Keith Brown, who received a jail sentence of 4 years in Dubai, for being found with just a suggestion of hashish on the sole of his shoe, a teeny weeny microscopic bit. Brown is a civil servant, works in the municipality in the youth project, father of 3 and with an impeccable work record, a devoted family man, trustworthy friend and an upright citizen to all those who know him. He was on his way back home after a business trip to the United Emirates, detained at the Dubai Airport. The bit of hashish found on the sole of his shoe weighed exactly 0,003 gram, and the sentence was given without the consideration of an evident fact, that he could have simply stepped on the stuff somewhere at the airport, in the Men's room or many other likely places, as easily as stepping on a piece of chewing gum or a cigarette butt for instance. He has been in jail since last September. Such a situation not only let us see how the same things are seen, valued or condemned differently in the world, geographically speaking, but it also gives an unexpected sense of an old saying, in China as well as in Spain: "Well done. You stepped on gold (shit)", where such an incident happening to you means you will encounter good luck! Tags:crime,guilt,cocaine,marihuana

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