Dispatches from the Creation Wars

More evidence we've allowed "Beyond reasonable doubt" to become "The police and prosecutor say he did it. Are you going to call the police and prosecutors liars?".

Posted by: JThompson | November 26, 2009 10:40 AM

If people being released are evidence that the system is broken, then would people *not* being released be the evidence that the system is not broken? Golly, then North Korea must have a brilliant justice systems, no convictions are overturned!

Any justice system will have such issues.

Posted by: Roman | November 27, 2009 4:17 AM

5 guys in hundreds of thousands (or is that a few million) doesn't make the system broken. Many things do need to be reviewed and changed though. We've known for decades that eye witnesses are not reliable (perhaps they were more reliable in small communities of only a few thousand people) and courts through the ages have all understood that sometimes you just have liars for witnesses (and police have special status of being trusted liars if they choose to lie). So the real challenge is: can any specific problems be identified, and what can be done to address them? For example, how big an issue are "star prosecutors" - people who want to make a name for themselves as the guy who's tough on crime and who would happily send innocent people to the gallows to inflate their egos and fast-track their promotions?

Posted by: MadScientist | November 27, 2009 6:31 AM

Ummm kids, that wasn't a statement made on the basis of these five people. The justice system being broken statement was made on the basis of case after case after motherfucking case coming down the pike. Those just being the cases that have actually made it through the system. Keeping in mind that the system actively fights the efforts of cons and their advocates to prove their innocence.

We have a system in which people are held in prison for years without trial, because the state doesn't have the money for his defense and they refuse to go for anything less than the death penalty. We have a system in which people are routinely encouraged to "make a deal," whether they are guilty or not - especially if they happen to have a public defender. We have a system that routinely imprisons people for non-violent, often victimless offenses, alongside violent and/or lifetime criminals, thus turning mostly law abiding citizens into institutionalized, hardened criminals. Not to mention prosecutors and cops who fudge the evidence, because they "know" this is the guy - never mind how often they turn out not to be - "they must be guilty of something" being the supporting montra.

You have to be fucking blind and not have read this blog regularly (which I am pretty sure both of you do), if nothing else, to not believe the justice system isn't completely and utterly fucked. It isn't like stories that are pretty strongly confirmed aren't common enough. Just consider how much of a challenge it is to get that confirmation - to get anyone to even look at your case, if you're in prison and tell me with a straight face that the system isn't completely and utterly fucked, from the top down.

Seriously, go ahead. If need be, I can waste the time with a much larger litany of the failures of the system.

Posted by: DuWayne | November 27, 2009 8:37 PM

Nope Roman, I don't. While such comparative statistics might exist, I doubt there has been much money thrown into studying them. And if you are actually paying attention, you might note that one, wrongful convictions are far from the only broken aspect of the system and two, they are extremely hard to actually push through the system. We have a system that actively fights any and all attempts to prove innocence post conviction. Evidence is routinely "lost," destroyed or access is simply denied - even on occasions when the convict and advocates for the con are willing to cover the cost of analysis. And though it seems to be getting somewhat better in some states, evidence of innocence is not always enough to get an exoneration. Nor is criminally incompetent representation often enough to get a case redressed. The Texas supreme court, for example, has ruled that it's ok to execute someone who's attorney was drunk and actually asleep for part of the trial, because he was awake for the "important" parts.

Nope, nothing broken about the system, nothing to see here, move on along...

Posted by: DuWayne | November 28, 2009 8:15 AM

@DuWayne

"Nope Roman, I don't"

So you admit that all you've got is anecdotal evidence. That's poor.

"Evidence is routinely "lost," destroyed or access is simply denied"

The usual argument of people who claim that the US government is hiding the truth about Area 51 and Roswell aliens.

Now, I don't claim that there is nothing wrong with the US justice system, but I would like to see some concrete evidence that it's broken more than other First World countries'.

@Canadian Curmudgeon

You meant "there has not been a *legal* execution there since 1996", did you?

Posted by: Roman | November 29, 2009 5:16 AM

The usual argument of people who claim that the US government is hiding the truth about Area 51 and Roswell aliens.

The significant difference being that while the claims about area 51 and the UN/extra terrestrial base on the dark side of the moon are curiously unsubstantiated, the fact that evidence is routinely destroyed, lost or access is simply denied post-conviction is a matter of record. It isn't just that it is reported by main stream media. It isn't just that organizations such as the Innocence Project, Amnesty International, the ACLU and many others have reported on this. This has been admitted to by fucking prosecutors and lawenforcement. The denial of access went through fucking SCOTUS earlier this year (or was it last year?).

The fact that I can't find statistics that very likely don't even exist, doesn't change the fact that our system of justice is completely and utterly fucked. The notion that public defenders encourage clients to plea whether guilty or not, is a matter of record. That prosecutors have a profound interest in getting convictions, to the point of ignoring evidence that a given defendant might be innocent, sometimes to the extent of fudging the evidence, is a matter of record. That a significant percentage of the people freed by the innocence project and various lawschool legal clinics, plead guilty to the crime for which they were imprisoned is a matter of record. And the fact that our system fights tooth and nail to prevent convicts from having the opportunity to fight their conviction is a matter of record...Not to mention the people who have been exonerated, only to spend months and sometimes years in prison after, because the system has issues with admitting to mistakes.

Want to know why it is unlikely those statistics you were asking for even exist? Ask five people at random - not your friends or people you know think much like you do, random people, how they would feel about using tax dollars to fund a study of our justice system and the number if innocent people convicted. It is much like trying to find accurate statistics about addiction and the efficacy of addiction treatments. Our society is very keen on moralizing and attempts to spend money on dirty little people like addicts and convicts is frowned upon.

I am totally curious - how exactly would you go about defending the system? You seem rather keen on saying that it isn't as bad as I imply, yet you refuse to actually respond to any of the charges I make. The closest you come to refuting anything I say, is to argue that I don't have statistics to show the U.S. is worse than other countries for convicting innocent people and to compare my assertions about evidence to conspiracy loons. Seems to me you're grasping at straws, but I would like to give you the opportunity to defend the status quo. Defend those prosecutors, those cops and the judges too...

Posted by: DuWayne | November 29, 2009 7:20 PM

The moral outrage is not necessarily due to the actual numbers of people negatively affected by the system - the figures are impossible to come by. The moral outrage is due to the refusal of politicians and the U.S. American people to fix the gaping holes that allow these things to happen. The actual numbers are largely irrelevant, though there are a lot of reasons to believe that injustice is exceedingly commonplace, based on what we do know for sure is happening.

The bottom line is that these things happen not because the system has some minor flaws, but because there are massive, systemic failures. I honestly don't give a flying fuck how our system compares to the systems in other countries. I know what I was taught the system is supposed to look like here in the U.S. and what we have isn't it.

Posted by: DuWayne | November 30, 2009 9:10 AM

Believe me, I am dead set against the death penalty and in all honestly, the only reason I am against it is that innocent people are likely to end up executed.

The upper class can buy its way out, and the lower class either doesn't care (because they are not literate enough to use the law to their advantage anyway and can't afford the lawyer) or sees the legal system as their enemy (because they live from petty crime).

That bit of classist fucking bullshit, however, I cannot let sit.
First of all, the upper class are not all just a bunch of lowlife scums who sit around thinking how nice it is that they can do anything and get away with it all, just because they have money. You tell me that if your child got into serious trouble for something or another and you could afford to make sure he got out of trouble, you wouldn't do what you can to help. There are certainly people with a level of principle that would not allow them to do so, but they are rare. The difference between most of us and the rich, when it comes to getting ourselves or loved ones out of trouble, is that they can afford to make it happen.

Second, as a man who has spent most of his adult life flopping around poverty level, fuck you and your abysmally fucking ignorant assessment of the poor. The vast majority of the lower class are very keen on the rule of law. They want safe fucking neighborhoods and living in the worst of them, they have the strongest motivation for it. They just tend to object to the notion that safe neighborhoods require that they be targeted by the police because they happen to be poor and live in a shitty neighborhood - or worse, add being a person of color to the equation.

We want to see the rule of law applied evenly and want to see people who live in poverty get a reasonable shake at justice. Few enough expect to get the same sort of counsel that the wealthy can afford, but getting a lawyer who will recommend more than just pleading, regardless of guilt would be a nice start. Not being harassed on a daily fucking basis, because you happen to be neighborly and accept that being neighborly in some neighborhoods sometimes means being neighborly to dope dealers, would also be rather keen. Hell, legalizing the illicit drugs and destroying the primary incentive for the organized crime that pervades shitty neighborhoods would be fucking huge.

Unfortunately you're right, if the middle class goes, the rule of law will suffer. Not because the rich and poor folks are disinterested. The rich are going to look out for their own selfinterest and the poor are pretty much fucking powerless to do much of anything about it.

Posted by: DuWayne | November 30, 2009 7:36 PM