Posted on 02/09/2014 11:47:07 AM PST by nickcarraway
Absolutely.
The right to be an officer of the court or of the law should come with the responsibility of allowing yourself to be held accountable.
You don't know that, do you?
I suspect there's more to this case than what is being reported.
And the PUBLIC SERVANTS probably KNEW that they were innocent, or that the case against them was pathetic but went for the easy win and hashmark for politickin’-n-campaignin’.
This is how bad it is:
DNA testing cleared the entire Duke lacrosse team of any contact with their accuser, two weeks before Nifong made his first arrests.
That is, the accuser said she was raped by 20 white men in a tiny bathroom (later changed to 5, or 2, or finally, 3 men); yet tests from two labs showed not a single cell, hair, or skin fragment from any team member—
although she claimed she had put up a half-hour struggle, with biting, kicking, and scratching; and that she had been hoisted in mid-air for part of the time.
DNA from around a dozen other men WAS found on her—but not from any Duke students.
Did that matter as evidence? NO. Because the prosecutor didn’t want it to.
Nifong said he would try the case “the old fashioned way”,
the way they did it before DNA tests became available.
And from then on there was every kind of pressure—and threat—to try and force the players to “cooperate” for a plea deal.
DNA = the Holy Grail.
On your knees, and worship!
Could be that prosecutors, judges and police are benign, as a rule.
Maybe we don’t have to even think about holding them accountable.
Maybe government is perfect.
“Yup.. my son was busted for three felonies for basically sitting on his front stoop...”
This is why the American justice system scares me.
1. You had two suspects, and one of them testifying against the other.
2. One of the suspects apparently had some kind of a deal for a reduced sentence, but his case went to trial anyway (this should raise a huge red flag with any lawyer).
3. The "reduced sentence" was nine years to life, and the guy was still in prison 22 years later ... which meant he effectively got the same sentence as his alleged accomplice.
4. All of this unfolded even though the guy who was supposed to get the reduced sentence was a minor at the time of the crime.
There's a lot here that isn't being reported -- that's for sure.
It’s not really the jurors’ fault. A jury is 12 people who don’t know each other and walking in, know nothing about the case. Typically, they do the best they can with the evidence they get. There is always the jury with the agenda, like in the O.J. Simpson case, but that’s not that common. The real problem is they trust the cops and prosecutor, and take the evidence at face value. They don’t always know what deals have been cut “off the record” for false testimony. They NEVER know about false confessions that have been psychologically coerced. And yes, the police are trained to psychologically coerce a confession. They NEVER know what exculpatory evidence the police ignore or sweep under the rug.
For the most part, they believe they are doing “the right thing.” It’s not their fault they’ve been lied to.
I understand all of that, but one very big difference between that case and the one here is that the Duke case involved an actual, living accuser. The circumstances are different in a case like that because a prosecutor (and a defense attorney) has more than just forensic evidence and third-party testimony to make their case.
I'm OK with that, but I don't know what the implications would be in the long run.
Jury trials are not a “waste of time” any more than elections are. Don’t forget, you are talking about the same people.
Us.
Just follow the money...
Then what was the point of your Post #49?
It’s worth noting that in this case, it appears that both the victims and the alleged perpetrators are all black. This explains why the 1992 triple-murder case never got much media exposure to begin with, and why CNN is only interested in it because they can present the two guys as sympathetic figures even though they spent 22 years in prison only because one of them flat-out lied about what happened.
Anybody who thinks you will get "justice" in our current system is out of their freaking minds...
You need a shark eating attorney to protect your interests...
The system is rigged to generate monies to cover the cost of the courts, jails, public defenders and etc...your innocence is a far distance priority...
Even minor offenses will cost you some serious jack to keep you away from the jackals looking to suck the life out of you to keep you in the system...hoping you slip up a little so they can slam the hammer down again...
I guess the MSM doesn't think innocent black people being murdered is important enough unless they can inject race into it...
Then it's all so important...
That’s why I have dropped my support for the death penaly...
Give me 3 eye witnesses and I’m a fan of the death penalty. Like you though, I’m not a fan of the death penalty.
Best would be to get rid of the entire "adversarial" system of justice and the job of DA altogether. The job of DA entails giant powers and almost nothing resembling accountability, it's a magnet for psychopaths. Better would be something like the French system in which the common incentive for all state personnel is to figure out what happened; NOBODY should have any sort of a career/money incentive to simply put people in prison. We could keep juries while adopting that sort of system.
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.