It pisses the hell out of me how riff-raff get a pass but decent people get nailed on piddly stuff. The dregs that are constantly in and out of court know the laws and court procedures really well, so the cops and judges have to really play it straight in court. The average joe doesn’t know most of his rights, and the cops and judge sure as hell aren’t going to tell him, so the good people go into court and get totally railroaded.
A guy isn’t going to spend several grand on a lawyer on a $300 misdemeanor, and the people running the system know that. They go into the den of sharks with no idea what’s up and just get eaten up. Welcome to the New America, all right, where the criminals are untouchable and the good people get manufactured into criminals.