Bringing someone to justice, I mentioned in my last post, is a phrase that has earned the designation of a tired cliché. If I used the phrase in one of my novels, (not in dialogue) I’m sure the editor would circle it in red. However, just because the phrase is a cliché, the meaning behind it is not. It is not a cliché to expect a criminal to be caught and tried for his crime. It is not a cliché to expect reasonable and sustained effort to be put forth to make certain that a criminal ( a murderer, for example) is put in jail.
Perhaps, at this stage of five plus years of the “ongoing investigation” into the murder of Stacey Burns. we should use another familiar phrase which hasn’t quite reached the cliché stage. This phrase appears in various forms but basically it has to do with the individual who says something like “I did justice to that cause.” Other words could be substituted for cause, such as idea, effort, ideal, belief, and others.
Now, the question is this: Have we all done justice to the Stacey Burns cause, which is, as I see it, revealing her killer?
To paraphrase William Shakespeare in Hamlet, “To do or not to do; that is the question.” From the same play, same act: “This above all; to thine own self be true.”
Duke
