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Do You Trust the System?
Let’s play a little game. Imagine for a moment that you’ve been accused of a crime. As a good citizen, you go through the motions…arrest, bail, arraignment, hire the best damned lawyer you can, assist in preparing your defense, etc. You are a model prisoner during your short stay beneath the court house, unlike certain district attorneys lately in the news. The charge is a serious one, and the evidence is dicey; however, the crime you’re accused of is an emotional hot button issue.
Through the process, the prosecution has blown right past every opportunity to do the right thing, consider the whole situation, and dismiss the charges. After all the preparation work is done, a deal is offered which you reject, immediately and with obscenities, because you’d rather go to prison than impugn your own character and tarnish your integrity by taking the easy way out. A deal is a lie. Always. Your life is not a used car over which to haggle.
The day of trial approaches. Your attorney will make no guarantees, but he assures you that your chances of acquittal are better than average. The evidence isn’t great for the prosecution, and he has some tricks up his sleeve that should really help. Your family and friends stand with you. Everyone who has heard of the situation is dumbfounded that such an asinine travesty has been carried so far. And yet: fear.
Imagine you’re in this situation. We are a nation of laws. We have a system designed to impartially, and as fairly as possible, determine guilt or innocence. As a right-thinking (and -leaning) person, you’ve placed a lot of stock in the system to do its job and get it right as often as is humanly possible. These are all fine words and ideas, but now it’s your life, your liberty in jeopardy. Do you trust the system?
Published in General
No.
Expound. Please.
Actually, KP, the case against you for selling that missing missile to the NorKs is a lot stronger than you think. Just sayin…
Not as much as I used to. (Extrapolating from dealings with the state and local ‘safety net’ since retiring.)
I think part of it is how local the case is and what the reputation of “the system” is where it will be tried. A very local case in an Edwin Edwards style small-town Louisiana would be pretty dicey. But given that half of the nation wanted to see George Zimmerman in front of a firing squad, things did work out as best they could. So I guess your set-up is a bit incomplete.
I’m hoping to be as generic in this as possible. Going for more a gut reaction. Let’s face it, if we had no faith in the systems that are in place we’d be liberals and trying to change them all the time. My curiosity is whether or not that rubber wears well when it meets the road.
No frigging way. At best I’d feel it’s a tossup. But I’d give myself a 20% chance. Then even after I’d gotten off everyone would think I’m guilty anyway.
Is your distrust in the due process of the system or in your fellow citizens who actually determine your fate? I’ll grant that judges, policies, and procedures probably do exert more force on the outcome than they should.
I’ve known a few too many overzealous prosecutors and police officers and have seen the jury selection process a few too many times not to be jaded. There is also the fact that with all the rules and regulations, it can be difficult not to violate laws every day, and then there are the process crimes, as with Martha Stewart and several others.
A friend was a very successful clinic owner. He had several doctors working for him, multiple locations, etc. A prosecutor took a fancy to the idea of having a high-profile case, and my friend wound up in jail for some period and had his license pulled. Why? Out of the thousands upon thousands of patients and procedures his clinics were seeing/performing per year, his employees had accidentally double-billed Medicaid twice. If you have ever dealt with medical billing of governments and insurance companies, you know it can be hard to keep track and jump through all of the hoops.
And that kind of thing is why I would not trust the process.
my trust in the system would go up depending on how much money I had, but down depending on how much fame the prosecutor thinks he’s going to get out of it.
That’s another one of those things that stretches KP’s question beyond its “gut reaction” intent. Duke Lacrosse and DocJay’s story of a developer being bankrupted for not contributing to a certain influential Senator’s campaign loom large over one’s basic desire to trust “the system.”
Both.
I think the folks in the system have their thumbs on the scales of justice. I also think the members of the jury presume guilt. After all, why else would everyone be there?
They can get a person on anything these days. They have so many laws at their disposal. And if they’re too lazy to make a case, they can hit a person with “obstruction of justice.” It is truly obscene.
This is the root of fear and distrust of the system in my opinion. I will say, however, that the one jury I served on took the job very seriously. Of course, I was there to keep any rabble rousers in line.
This is a specific charge based on an initially credible allegation. But, even as the credibility of the allegation dropped in proportion to the evolution of the story the prosecutor decided he would still rather lose at trial than dismiss the charges.
The public notoriety/importance of this case shouldn’t be a big deal, especially with the accused rapist/murderer of Jenise Wright in custody.
Now there’s another thing is that I can never seem to get on a jury.
Criminal trial venireman question: Do you know any police officers?
Me: My father is a retired police officer. My brother is a current police officer. My uncle was a …
Defense attorney: We’d like to thank Mr. Arahant…
Civil trial: What do you do for a living?
Me: I have run various businesses…
Plaintiff’s (usually) attorney: We’d like to thank Mr. Arahant…
Am I supposed to trust a system that always excludes me?
You ain’t excluded now. KP just arrested you.
For the record, I just finished CJ Box’s Trophy Hunt. I’m never trusting anyone ever again. (A really good yarn btw)
Not even a cat?
There are so many reasons prosecutors proceed with or drop cases based on their whims. If the accused or the victim is a public figure in any way at all, or if there is any politically correct or politically charged angle, . . .
I’ve read quite a few stories in which DAs said they were proceeding in cases even though all they had was a pile of circumstantial evidence. And I’ve seen juries convict on that basis alone. It is alarming.
And if it were me, I would never say I was guilty of something I was not guilty of. I don’t care what the prosecutors say today, an admission of guilt can come back later. I would not believe anyone’s promises.
Not so much anymore. Especially when miscreants like the one in this story are allowed to wreak havoc in our communities.
You can trust every cat except a cheetah.
NO! Been there done that.
Absolutely not.
I’ve no reason to mistrust (versus trust) the system in Alaska, meaning I’m sort of neutral. But the power a federal prosecutor has scares me. I mistrust the federal system.
Also, if I’m going to have to pay for my own lawyer in a criminal case where I’m in jail and it’s going to trial (you said I’m hiring the best lawyer) then I’ll end up paying the bill for the rest of my life.
The DA will throw 101 things at me, causing the Jury to acquit on most, but still hang me on some. When having a different story than another guy is now a crime (Scoter Libby), or defending the allegations of the DA in public is a crime (Martha Stewart), what hope do I have? The Government holds all the cards. They will use the process to bankrupt me and destroy me.
Once the system has decided it wants to destroy you, it will.
“Do you trust the system?”
No. I’ve been through this in civil court. The best explanation my attorney could come up with was that the judge took a bribe. Far too expensive to appeal (more than the matter at stake)…
Great question.
I would say, No. In part — in large part — that’s because of the powers of and pressures on prosecutors and police, and, separately, judges. In part it’s because so much of criminal law is now so disconnected from the moral intuitions of society that a jury serves no purpose other than to be bamboozled by a prosecutor.
So basically what I’m hearing is the system is corrupt. No one reports a good experience or outcome when dealing with the system as it currently functions but no one has an opinion on if it functioned as designed.
I have a theory as to why this is. Our system now (the criminal justice system specifically) is no longer about justice but exists solely to manage criminals. The corruptions in place exist because the system as designed would let far too many guilty people go free. As a society we’ve allowed the system to be what it is so that those without virtue do not take advantage and run rough shod over the rest of us. The system is a pump to circulate the habitually criminal within its pipes and chambers. The problem is that there is no sieve with which to strain out the truly innocent when they fall in by happenstance. The citizen jurors should be the check on this system, but they are too disengaged and uninformed to serve that function any longer.