We have a terrible justice system. And I have barely begun to scratch the surface of it in my blog on Justice:
http://drzuma.blogspot.com/
For another, see: http://www.duiblog.com/category/duiblog
Over the past 30 years, mandatory minimums, three-strikes, and a host of “designer laws” and penalty enhancements have greatly reduced the power and discretion of judges and tilted the system overwhelmingly in favor of the prosecution. The wars on drugs and alcohol have almost entirely eviscerated the 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments. Over 90% of felony cases are now decided by plea bargain—and these are no “bargains” in any conventional meaning of the term, due to prosecutorial overcharging. There is no longer a presumption of innocence, or any of the other constitutional safeguards and protections that a jury trial is supposed to ensure. The police routinely lie, fabricate and destroy evidence, and everyone knows it.
We are the most punitive society on earth. We incarcerate 2.3 million people—that is, we have 5% of the world’s population and 26% of the world’s prisoners. We incarcerate 7 times more people per capita than our counterparts in Europe, Canada and Japan and our crime rates are still no lower. That’s because, only about 17% of the people in prison are there for things that are traditionally considered crime—rape and murder (less than 1%), robbery (4%), burglary (10%). About 56% of the people in California prisons are there on technical parole violations—for things like having beer cans in their garbage, or failing to show up to a meeting with their parole officers. Roughly half of the people in prison are there because of drugs and alcohol; another 1/3 to 1/2 are mentally ill (there is considerable overlap). The vast bulk of people we punish are more disreputable than dangerous.
The system is starkly racist at every level. There are 990 incarcerated white men for every 100,000 white men; there are 6,863 black men for every 100,000 black men, even though the underlying crime rates are virtually identical across races.
We are one of five countries that puts children to death; and we execute more children than all other countries combined. We are the only society on earth that sentences children to life without possibility of parole.
Our prisons are an international human rights embarrassment. They are riddled with racism, brutality, rape and torture.
The way the U.S. Attorney General is situated as a political appointee, the whole law enforcement and judicial system is open to political influence and corruption. (See Gonzalez and the record of the Bush Administration firing U.S. Attorneys in the Civil Rights and Labor Law divisions for ideological reasons, or the stuff coming out now about the use of the Justice Dept. to justify ignoring international law so that they could practice torture.)
Corporations who steal billions quite often get away with it, or they bribe the safety inspectors that would ding them for dangerously sped-up assembly lines, while someone holding a rock of cocaine get 18 years under federal mandatory minimums (which is more than what some give out for low level homicides).
Anyway, you have to wonder how they got somebody to plead guilty to a crime he hadn’t yet committed and why you would consider that “good news.”
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