Posted on 12/28/2005 7:44:08 PM PST by A. Pole
While enjoying the Christmas season in the comfort of your home, take a minute to say a prayer for the wrongfully convicted.
American prisons are full of wrongfully convicted persons. Many were coerced into admitting to crimes they did not commit by prosecutors’ threats to pile on more charges. Others were convicted by false testimony from criminals bribed by prosecutors, who exchanged dropped charges or reduced sentences for false testimony against defendants.
Not all the wrongfully convicted are poor. Some are wealthy and prominent people targeted by corrupt prosecutors seeking a celebrity case in order to boost their careers.
Until it happens to them or to a member of their family, Americans are clueless as to the corruption in the criminal justice (sic) system. Most prosecutors are focused on their conviction rates, and judges are focused on clearing their court dockets. Defendants are processed accordingly, not in terms of guilt or innocence.
“Law and order conservatives” wrongly believe that the justice (sic) system is run by liberal judges who turn the criminals loose. In actual fact, the system is so loaded against a defendant that very few people, including the totally innocent, dare to risk a trial. Almost all (95 percent to 97 percent) felony indictments are settled by a coerced plea. By withholding exculpatory evidence, suborning perjury, fabricating evidence and lying to jurors, prosecutors have made the risks of a trial too great even for the innocent. Consequently, the prosecutors’ cases and police evidence are almost never tested in court. Defendants are simply intimidated into self-incrimination rather than risk the terrors of trial.
According to Yale University law professor John Langbein, “The parallels between the modern American plea bargaining system and the ancient system of judicial torture are many and chilling.” Just as the person on the rack admitted to guilt in order to stop the pain, the present day defendant succumbs to psychological torture and cops a plea, whether he is innocent or guilty, in order to avoid ever more charges.
Michael Tonry, director of Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology, reports that the United States has a higher percentage of its population in prison than any country on earth, including dictatorships, tyrannies and China. The U.S. incarceration rate is up to 12 times higher than that of European countries.
Unless you believe Americans are 12 times more criminally inclined than Europeans, why is one of every 80 Americans (not counting children and the elderly) locked away from family, friends, career and life? Part of the answer is the private prison industry, which requires inmates to fuel the profits of investors. Another part of the answer is career-driven prosecutors who want convictions at all costs. Yet another is the failure of judges to rein in prosecutorial abuses. Another part of the answer is the hostility of Americans to defendants and indifference to their innocence or guilt.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq has brought the breakdown in American moral fiber to the fore. The horrific tortures and abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, the public justifications of torture by the president and vice president of the United States, and the CIA kidnappings and torture of detainees in secret prisons put the American “liberators” in the same camp as Saddam Hussein. It is ironic that mistreatment of Iraqis is one of the justifications that Bush uses for overthrowing Saddam.
In his book, “Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws,” Judge Andrew P. Napolitano reports on cases of torture, psychological abuse and frame-ups that he discovered as presiding judge.
I have reported a number of wrongful convictions. Anytime a new offense is created, the word goes out to “produce convictions.” Over a decade ago, William R. Strong Jr. was made a victim of Virginia’s new wife rape law. Strong discovered his wife in an affair with her boyfriend and was about to serve her with divorce papers. She found out and struck first, accusing him of rape. Strong has been trying to get a DNA test for many years, confident that the semen in the perk test is that of the lover of his unfaithful wife, but Virginia’s criminal justice (sic) system is unresponsive.
Another innocent victim of Virginia justice (sic) is Chris Gaynor. Gaynor took his skateboard team to a competition. When one of the kids tried to buy drugs, Gaynor threatened to tell his parents. To pre-empt Gaynor, the kid accused him of sexual abuse. There was no evidence against Gaynor, and the entire team knew the real story. However, Gaynor was framed by a corrupt prosecutor, reportedly a man-hating lesbian, with the connivance of a corrupt judge, who intimidated Gaynor’s young witnesses by jailing one of them without cause. Gaynor’s innocence was of less importance to the criminal justice (sic) system than a desire to increase convictions for child sex abuse.
In America, defendants are no longer innocent until they are proven guilty. They are guilty the minute they are charged, and the system works to process the guilty, not to determine innocence or guilt.
Americans in their ignorance and gullibility think that only the guilty would enter a guilty plea. This is the uninformed opinion of the naive who have never experienced the terror and psychological torture of the U.S. criminal justice (sic) system.
Unfortunately, this is truer than I'd like it to be.
Bump!
Take a minute to say a prayer for the wrongfully convicted.
American prisons are full of wrongfully convicted persons. Many were coerced into admitting to crimes they did not commit by prosecutors’ threats to pile on more charges.
There is a new tv show now to prove this...........
But, but, but, that's the way it is on CSI and Law and Order! The cops there are never wrong, and even when they are, they're still right! I see it every night on TV! *sigh*
Sad.
I really was surprised at just how awful some of the jury verdicts seemed to me.
I frankly would love to go before an American Jury if I were guilty and would be scared to death if innocent.
Do you believe that "Americans are 12 times more criminally inclined than Europeans"?
I learned in the cold war that if you interrogate a person long enough and deprive them of sleep feed them at irregular times and and mess up their sleep patterns they will confess to anything.
Guilty will tend to chose the tactics which are the most advantageous. The innocent will stick to the truth at their peril.
But sometimes the innocent lie to win. I knew one cynical guy who when faced with the prosecution based on the false witness, instead of trying to prove the truth, he just produced another false counter-witness. And it worked!
The U.S. invasion of Iraq has brought the breakdown in American moral fiber to the fore. The horrific tortures and abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, the public justifications of torture by the president and vice president of the United States, and the CIA kidnappings and torture of detainees in secret prisons put the American “liberators” in the same camp as Saddam Hussein. It is ironic that mistreatment of Iraqis is one of the justifications that Bush uses for overthrowing Saddam.
From what I have seen, the "tortures and abuses" committed by our troops at Abu Ghraib fell far short of "horrific." And to equate them with mass murder committed by Saddam Hussein is beyond belief.
No, but we have one solution to every problem, and that's send everyone to jail.
Too many illegal immigrants? Throw their employers in jail.
Disorderly sixth graders? Arrest them.
A business goes broke? Must be fraud, investigate everyone.
There is no stupidy, no accidents, everything is due to evildoers!
Te implication is that Europe imprisons the "right" amount of people. Maybe Europe is 1/12 as effective at protecting society from criminals.....
Would you recommend Abu Ghraib treatment to the arrested American suspects?
Do we not lock up criminal children (16-19 year olds) or the elderly (65+)? Or are these groups excluded from the denominator but not the numerator in order to produce a shockingly large number?
I could read this through to see what evidence he has but this phrase tells me enough. This fellow has a totally warped perception and sense of proportion.
Read my tagline. There is a critical mass when the prison industry becomes so big that cannot be controlled.
This hyperbole makes me question his credibility.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.