As we try and navigate the grey area between right and wrong we will inevitably stumble upon inconvenient truths and realities. When we become bogged down in the sticky search for that elusive thing called justice, it is the law we assume as our guide to provide clarity in contradiction.
It is upon the law that we - each one of us - are told we can rely, a place where we can put our trust that all things will be considered, weighed up and cross-examined. It is the law that says, in its eyes, all are equal; that we are all entitled to a fair trial, and that we are all innocent until prosecutors prove our guilt.
With this in mind, I turn to the case of 29-year-old Mark Duggan who was buried on Friday. The father-of-four from Tottenham was shot dead on August 4 by police officers in broad daylight during an operation to arrest him. Why? A month on, we are yet to find out why.
While the Met Police floundered and dragged their feet, a protest broke out in north London which sparked a wave of violent riots that wreaked havoc across the country. The Met has since apologised to his family for their slow response in telling them about his death, suspended one of its marksmen but no explanation has been forthcoming.
Yet, it is the victim himself, not the potentially unlawful actions of the police, that many in the media have put on trial from the early coverage of his death to the very day his grieving friends family laid him to rest.
"Gangsta salute for a fallen soldier" cried the Daily Mail, later changed to "Mourners in bling and farewell salutes for suspected gangster".
What a relief it must come to his family that the investigation into his death will be handled by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and not the right wing press in whose world "bling" and tacky clothes are clear cut signs of Duggan's "the murky past".
Warming to his theme, the reporter David Wilkes feverishly described where he found evidence of Mark Duggan's "gangster" side: "It was there in the one-armed salute that men and women gave as the white, horse-drawn hearse passed along the streets from Duggan's family home in Tottenham", he said.
Shamelessly cashing in on his artistic licence, he continued: "Outside the church, where those mourners who could not fit inside stood on the pavement, the air was thick with the smell of cannabis."
I found this line particularly hard to swallow considering, not least because I was in same area all day and found not only the air visibility to be quite clear and quite fresh too, but because of the implication that consuming drugs makes you a gangster.
If this is the case, from evidence I have seen, there are a few newsrooms and city firms that need looking into.
But the trump card in his piece was the not so scintillating revelation that Scarface was one of Mark Duggan's favourite films - him and its millions of other fans who have helped make the crime epic a classic.
Who Mark Duggan was should not be calculated using stereotypes, judging him by those who he was affiliated with, and, least of all, the kind of middle class snobbery that passes judgment based on what people wore to his funeral.
Least of all, should they be used to somehow justify his death.
This Mark Duggan: saint or sinner rhetoric cannot be allowed to detract from the real question: are the police allowed to kill?
What we cannot overlook are the facts: Duggan had no previous convictions, but was known to police. He was the subject of a police investigation led by Operation Trident, although we do not know what for.
We know on the day he died, specially-trained officers fired two shots. One struck Mark Duggan in his chest, killing him. The other bullet was found lodged in a police radio.
A weapon found at the scene had not been fired.
So the questions linger: why did Mark Duggan get killed that day? And was it legal to do so?
Hours after the event, stories like this one from the Telegraph, had already decided the series of events: "A policeman's life was saved by his radio last night after gunman Mark Duggan opened fire on him and the bullet hit the device".
We now know this was not the case.
It is up to the IPCC to provide the answers - not the media, because too often we get it wrong.