Benefit of Doubt — Jack London

A man is punched without warning and beaten so badly his own face barely survives it — and it is still he, not his attacker, who is mocked in the next morning's papers. Jack London's “Benefit of Doubt” makes you sit with a phrase you will use constantly in your career, and shows exactly how a rule meant to protect the innocent can be twisted to protect whoever the system already favours.

In two minutes

Carter Watson is beaten in an unprovoked assault, then loses in a rigged local court that gives his attacker — not him — the benefit of the doubt; his answer is to recreate the same injustice against the judge himself, until the very rule that failed him is forced to work.

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