Metropolitan Courthouse

What's wrong with this picture?

This is a sculpture of the scales of justice in front of the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Courthouse.

This is a graphic shown Thursday night on KOAT TV’s coverage of the federal indictments into allegations of a public corruption kickback scheme during the construction of the courthouse.

Local newscaster, newspaper reporters and bloggers went into a near feeding frenzy over telling this story.

So what's wrong with this picture?


The graphic depicts the Bernalillo County District Courthouse, which was not the topic of the news story.

The sculpture of the scales works backwards. The pans on the scales have water poured into them through internal plumbing. However, the water enters the lowered pan, the one that would already indicate the greater weight of evidence. When the water fills the pan the scales tip the opposite direction than the laws of physics dictate.

Contrary to what appears in these pictures to be happening to the scales, the upper pan should accept water and then move downward. Not as it is now, where the lowered pan accepts water, then rises.

So what does it mean? Is it any indication of how justice actually works in New Mexico? Or is the public supposed to be blind to justice?