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How To Crash the US Justice System: Demand a Trial
Hugh Pickens writes "The U.S. Bill of Rights guarantees the accused basic safeguards, including a fair and speedy jury trial, but in this era of mass incarceration — when our nation's prison population has quintupled in a few decades — these rights are, for the overwhelming majority of people hauled into courtrooms across America, theoretical. More than 90 percent of criminal cases are never tried before a jury, in part because the Supreme Court ruled in 1978 that threatening someone with life imprisonment for a minor crime in an effort to induce him to forfeit a jury trial did not violate his Sixth Amendment right to trial. 'The truth is that government officials have deliberately engineered the system to assure that the jury trial system established by the Constitution is seldom used,' says Timothy Lynch, director of the criminal justice project at the libertarian Cato Institute. Now Susan Burton, head of 'A New Way of Life' (PDF), is helping to start a movement to demand restoration of Americans' basic civil and human rights by asking people who have been charged with crimes to reject plea bargains, and press for trial. 'Can we crash the system just by exercising our rights?' Burton says if everyone charged with crimes suddenly exercised his constitutional rights, there would not be enough judges, lawyers or prison cells to deal with the ensuing tsunami of litigation."
and my attorney advised that a trial would be more expensive, so i should just settle
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
A plea bargain ensures that justice is not done.
Either a guilty person gets less punishment than they deserve or an innocent person gets punished when they deserve no punishment. It's a lose-lose situation.
Of course a bigger problem with the law is that ignorance of the law is no excuse but it's impossible for me to know every law and precedent that applies to me.
...there is no sig...
Not only demands for Jury Trials -
Occupy should start the Nullify movement - E.G. if you are on a jury refuse to return a guilty verdict for victimless BS charges.
It is your right and DUTY to judge not only guilt or innocence but also the merit of the law itself.
Fully Informed Jury Association -
http://fija.org/
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Don't worry, after a few months of litigation you too can be indigent.
That's a joke. The reality is that, yes, a jury trial is MUCH more expensive than taking your lawyer's plea agreement -- unless you calculate in your time in prison, etc.
The real issue is that you actually CAN be punished for demanding a jury trial -- the sentence will be heavier -- this is tailored as "lack of remorse" essentially -- you're still claiming innocence!? You aren't facing up to your criminal liability. Add time.
-GiH
The liberal obsession with statist solutions is very scary.
Liberal? It's been the Conservatives at the forefront of the "fuck them, imprison them all, especially the n____s and spics" system.
What, you didn't think that sentencing guidelines different for "crack" and "powder" cocaine came out of nowhere did you? Crack is predominantly used by blacks, powder primarily used by the silver-spoon sons of the upper crust. And as for Marijuana, Texas senators are on record, "All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff is what makes them crazy"; in the Deep South, marijuana bans were a way to discriminate against blacks, and again came up the comments, like "Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice."
These laws were passed by Conservatives, not liberals. Conservatives, aka deranged lunatics like this.
Oh stop using the word terrorism unless you're talking about a non-government group using terror in order to achieve a political objective. If you can't explain why something is wrong without labelling it as something it's not then I'll assume you're just trying to imply guilt by association.
Said that of all his clients, there was only one who he wasn't 100% sure was guilty. That isn't to say some of them didn't get off. One was a kid arrested with Sharpies on his person that the police claimed he used for tagging. He admitted to my friend he had in fact done so. However the search had been illegal, so the case was tossed. Saw the same kid back about 6 months later. This time the police had waited until they'd seen him tagging something, no getting out of that.
This wasn't my friend being an asshole on his assumptions or anything. The one case he was unsure about was the only one where there wasn't direct physical evidence, or an admission, of guilt.
In general, this is what you'd hope. You'd hope that cases would only be brought forward if the prosecution felt there was a good chance the person was guilty. The idea with the justice system isn't to just toss everyone in court and see what sticks. While a high plea rate can be indicative of other problems and we do need to monitor courts for abuses carefully, it can also simply mean that the state is doing its homework. They only press charges when they've got good evidence. The defense gets to see this evidence and tells their client "take the deal."
That is what happened with the kid the second time around. He was initially smug and said "You can get me off again, right?" My friend explained no, this was iron clad open and shut. Take the deal offered because there was no way he was walking away free.
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I guess it all boils down to it still being possible - not to suggest justice is inherently flawed, just imperfect - to be convicted of a crime one did not commit.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Everybody is still innocent until proven guilty, but what they do to innocent people these days is hard to fathom.
Oh stop using the word terrorism unless you're talking about a non-government group using terror in order to achieve a political objective. If you can't explain why something is wrong without labelling it as something it's not then I'll assume you're just trying to imply guilt by association.
I am a law-abiding citizen. I am also much, much more likely to be harmed in some way or another by my government or someone in their employment that ANY foreign terrorist. At least the government would try to look like they're going after any foreign terrorist who strikes American soil. By contrast, a government agent who harms me in some way (legally or not) is unlikely to ever face a penalty of any kind. Without doing a Google search, when's the last time you recall hearing about a police officer who was prosecuted and put in prison for abusing his power? Do you think they never abuse their power?
You're right, they are not terrorists. Terrorists couldn't do that much damage for that long to that many millions of people in their wildest wet dreams. They are worse than terrorists. They've been that way ever since the statesman was replaced by the career politician.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Which just goes to show that the court system in America is not accessible to everyone. It's tailored to the rich, those that have already been convicted of something, and people who are already lawyers. It's a damn travesty.
Lies. It happens all the time.
Scenario: You blew a .04% on the breathalyzer and showed a .03% on the blood test, but you swerved. We have it on video. You also stumbled when we asked you to walk the straight line during the field sobriety test, never mind that it was twenty degrees out and we didn't let you put your jacket on and we drew the line right beside a busy interstate. We have this on video too. We can make a deal where you lose your license for a year, pay ten grand, take some classes, and are on probation for a year...or you can take it to trial and go to jail for a year. During that time, your girlfriend will see other men, you'll lose your pets, most of your possessions, and come out pretty much bankrupt from all the bills you weren't able to pay. Your move.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Actually there IS a magic bullet, its called "get rid of sin crimes" and treat adults like adults. The late William F Buckley said a perfect explanation once, sorry if i don't get the quote exact but it went like this: "If I put a bottle on a table that says poison and has a skull and crossbones on it and i tell you 'this is poison, it will destroy your health, destroy your family, before it finally destroys you' and you push me out of the way and gulp the bottle straight down? Well stupid you frankly are too ignorant to live! why should I spend billions to build cages to put you in and armed guards around the bottle because you are too dumb not to drink it?"
Gambling, prostitution and drugs should ALL be legal and regulated, no different than booze is now. Personal responsibility means being able to choose stupidly as well as smartly and if you removed non violent offenders out of the system you wouldn't have this problem...
But here is the REAL truth, ugly and sick such as it is, the elite have figured out how to make money off those poor by locking them up, both by privatizing the prison system and with prison labor, not to mention all the traditionally mafia style rackets like concessions Prisons and the prison system are billion dollar businesses and they give the elite the added bonus of stripping the rights away from a large section of the minorities so it is a win/win for them.
Well right up until we have an Arab spring, which i figure we will have in the next decade, right around when unemployment hits 50% and the crime shoots through the roof because all these millions of uneducated poor can't feed themselves because all the factories were sent to Asia and all the manual labor given to illegals. Somehow I doubt power will be transferred as nicely as it was in the old USSR, it'll probably be more like Libya which with the amount of firepower the USA has spread out all over the country should give anyone nightmares. But hopefully when the final round has been fired we will go back to a more strict constitutional government where people are treated like adults again and the corps aren't allowed to become destructive monsters like they are now.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
There are exactly two parts in every law book that have no touch with reality: Sex and drugs.
And it's only two because nobody ever bothered with rock'n roll.
Quite seriously, these are the two parts of every civil law book that plain out don't make any sense. I can see the point in everything else, since it usually involves two parties, a culprit and a victim. In these two parts, they're usually rolled into one. Kinda like the law trying to protect you from yourself.
And IMO that's now the law's prerogative. I should have the right to ruin my life in the way I prefer. Once you let me vote and enter other contracts perfectly able to ruin my life forever, I should also have the right to ruin it in a more pleasurable way.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I generally agree with the legalization argument, but you're oversimplifying things. Many things are illegal only partially for the damage they allow you to do to yourself. The abuse of many substances could/would also have a widespread negative effect on society. Just as we restrict "liberty" by forcing all children to go to school in order to promote an educated society, we should also restrict liberty by preventing people from using highly addictive drugs like opiates.
An interesting take, straight out of "Hugs not Drugs!" But also utter bullshit.
Legalization leads to less abuse by youths, and less abuse overall, lower rates of addiction, and less overall harm.
If you're really trying to "protect" people from dangerous drugs and their ill effects on society, you should be working to legalize or decriminalize just about everything, since the Netherlands experiment shows pretty conclusively that young people have less access to drugs in a legalized marketplace (because black marketeers don't check ID) there's less experimentation among youth, less addiction among youth, and less addiction overall in society. Overall, fewer people take drugs in the Netherlands now that they're de facto legal.
Who did what now?