Straining at gnats, swallowing camels.(The Last Word)

Before allegedly abducting and murdering 11-year-old Carlie Brucia on February 1, Joseph P. Smith had compiled a distinguished record as a thug: His vita includes 13 arrests since 1993. Notes the Sarasota Herald-Tribune: "Time after time, Joseph P. Smith received second chances. He was put on probation and sent to treatment programs instead of jail."

Last December, after Smith violated the terms of his probation, Circuit Court Judge Harry Rapkin declined to sign an arrest warrant, insisting that there was insufficient evidence to justify sending the recidivist back to jail. Rapkin's decision left a career criminal free on the streets of Sarasota, where--according to videotaped evidence--he seized Carlie on her way home from a slumber party. Her lifeless body was found shortly afterward.

In a television interview following Carlie's murder, Judge Rapkin insisted that it would have been tragically unfair to punish Smith for his failure to pay court-ordered fees: "You can't incarcerate someone for not having money." No, but a judge can, and should, send an unregenerate criminal to jail for failing to fulfill the terms of his probation --lest the criminal become a lethal threat to the innocent, as Smith apparently did.

In the case of Joseph P. Smith, the justice system was culpably indifferent to the rights of the law-abiding, and perversely determined to leave a dangerous criminal at large. Ah, but in all fairness shouldn't we recognize that the system has successfully snared such truly dangerous figures as Martha Stewart?

Smith's alleged crime is easily described and understood: kidnapping and murdering an innocent child. What is Stewart's supposed offense? In late 2001, after consultations with her stockbroker, she sold a quantity of stock shortly before its value plummeted, thereby netting a relatively modest profit. Federal prosecutors initially wanted to charge Stewart with "insider trading" but were stymied by a lack of evidence.

As Investor's Business Daily points out, Stewart was hardly an "insider." She simply "sold her shares on her broker's advice" --and did so long after the stock in question had started its decline. "The record shows Martha is guilty of nothing so much as selling stock that was on the way down," commented the paper. "If that's a crime, then we're all guilty."

Indeed, demonstrating that "we're all guilty"--that we're all lawbreakers who enjoy our liberties only by the grace of the almighty state--is the central purpose of the Martha Stewart show trial. Given the relentless accumulation of laws, regulations and bureaucratic ...