Getting back a good name

To paraphrase an old saying, when somebody ruins their reputation by making bad decisions, it takes an awful lot of hard work for them to get back their good name.

I believe most of us would agree with that. After all, all of us have seen examples where a lifetime of good deeds done by a person is tainted by a few bad choices.

But what about people who did nothing wrong but their reputations got tarnished just because they were a victim of circumstance? We live in a society where it is becoming more common for people to be convicted in the court of public opinion long before all the facts are known.

An excellent example of this involved the circumstances surrounding the murder of six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey in 1996. The child beauty queen was found murdered in her family's home and for years a cloud of suspicion covered members of her family.

This was a crime that was right up the alley of our 24-hour-a-day news cycle world. The crime had a little bit of everything. Beauty, wealth, sex, mystery, and intrigue were all important ingredients of what fed the public's interest in this story.

JonBenet's parents and her older brother were the primary targets of the investigation. The Boulder, Colo., district attorney's office made no secret of their thoughts regarding the family's possible involvement in this crime.

The nightly cable news talk shows frequently packed their programs with endless speculation about who might have murdered her.

However, despite all the speculation and leaks to the media, nobody in the family was ever charged. To this date, nobody has been brought to trial for this crime.

Finally, after almost 12 years, officials in Boulder recently cleared the family of any wrongdoing by using new technology on crime scene evidence.

Prosecutors announced that they were "deeply sorry" for anything they might have done to put the family under a cloud of suspicion.

For anybody who remembers the hysteria that surrounded this case a decade ago, a simple "I'm sorry" seems a little weak.

The apology can't help JonBenet's mother Patsy who died a few years ago of cancer.

Also, what about JonBenet's brother? He was only nine when his sister died, and he certainly had to have been aware of the speculation that he was involved in her death.

How deeply does a young boy get scarred when people speak about him in such a way? I would imagine it cut him up in ways that we will never know.

The media's reaction to the apology was fascinating and understated. Most major media outlets had no problem exploiting the story when it first occurred. A person could not turn on the television without seeing some type of discussion on the case.

However, the reporting of the apology barely caused a ripple on the media landscape. There was some discussion of it, but it came and went as quickly as last week's rain.

So what does this all mean?

We all need to do a better job of understanding the facts of a situation before convicting a person in the court of public opinion.

Because of the rush to judgment involving the Ramsey family, many will only remember the shadow that was cast upon them and not the apology they received.

Unfortunately, we see situations like this all the time, especially in a presidential election season.

Candidates sling mud at each other and people form opinions based on the mud instead of what the facts are.

And that is truly dangerous.