The wheels of justice grind slowly, but grind exceedingly fine, the Chinese general and philosopher Sun Tsu is said to have observed more than 2,500 years ago. What he and many others who have employed that proverb over the ages have meant by that is justice is rarely immediate, but it is inevitable.
To put it in even more contemporary terms, it takes time to build a case to ensure that justice is served. An example of this are the vehicular homicide charges just filed against a motorcyclist who was involved in a fatal accident at the intersection of Route 610 and Route 50 a year ago.
In that instance, the facts seemed to be apparent. The accused was driving his bike when he ran into another motorcycle, resulting in the serious injury of the two people on that vehicle and the death of his own passenger.
What appears to have happened and proving it in court, however, are two different things. No decent prosecutor would go to court armed only with suggestions and speculative conclusions, but that’s all the state had in this case for months.
The investigation of this accident took so long because of the need to extract the fine details from all the information available and because the state’s expert accident investigators were not immediately available.
That brings us to the tragedy of 14-year-old Gavin Knupp and why the public should not lose hope that justice will be served. Although his hit-and-run death on Gray’s Corner Road in July seems to be going nowhere, it would be wrong to assume that the Maryland State Police and the Worcester County State’s Attorney’s Office have run up against investigatory obstacles they can’t resolve or that this case will linger until it fades from memory and nothing will be done.
That is unlikely, especially as the public continues to push for justice. As the recent filing of charges in the year-old motorcycle incident show, delivering justice for Gavin may take an uncomfortable amount of time, but this slow grinding of the wheels doesn’t mean that anyone is going to get away with anything.