You will get no argument from me that the justice system is broken. What do you suggest to fix it? I assume that the fix has written about before, links, or search criteria and/or discussion would be appreciated.

There is no just cause for the prosecutors office to seek dramatically worse punishments simply because the defendant insists upon a trial. It appears that so much of police work is geared toward getting confessions as well. It’s how they are able to flood the jails with so many petty criminals, and convict so many innocents. If state agents had to exert real effort and take every case to a full trial, they would have to be much more judicious in the use of their resources and their attitudes towards petty crime.

Take the New York debacle, where they decriminalized possession of marijuana for personal use but the police forced nearly 2 million black and hispanic youths to “turn out their pockets” and nail them on a public display charge. The only reason they were able to get away with that for as long as they did, is that they were able to get the vast majority to confess. As far as the agents of the state are concerned that’s not 2 million people whose rights were violated, its 2 million slam-dunk arrests and convictions. If they actually had to go to trial, and if public defenders could no longer encourage their clients to cut a deal, then maybe all of the obvious civil rights abuses by the police would have come to light much earlier. Let the case be decided in a court of law, on the public record, not in some police interrogation room.

Presumably when DNA testing first became widespread in the mid 90′s, the “freed after two decades” story was acceptable, as there were few ways to prove innocence prior to that. But, nearly two decades since, we see the exact same pattern persists. Someone is convicted, usually based on a coerced confession, or if a trial took place usually only a few eyewitnesses plus a cop or two are required to get convictions. After the conviction DNA evidence is discovered (how this ALWAYS fails to emerge during the investigation and trial process is something I would like to further research done on). Then the convicted has to go through the lengthy and byzantine appeals process, often getting denied a re-trail several times by judges who arbitrarily declare that they are not deserving of one despite the existence of evidence that was never tested at their original trial. If it was a particularly high profile case, or a particularly malicious prosecutor, expect the prosecutors office to resist and impede any attempt by the convicted to get a new trial. After decades of attempts the cases themselves are usually quickly decided because in many the evidence is so overwhelming.

In short the justice system is about applying the process of justice, as defined by government, not actual confirmation of guilt or innocence. We see this all the time in internal investigations; procedure was followed, move along. Several supreme court justices, notably Scalia, have no problem with egregious human and civil rights violations so long as the “process” of justice was applied. It doesn’t matter if your prosecuted manufactured evidence against you; you received a fair trial as defined by the state.

Its this very crooked shell game where in you are always responsible for the worst interpretations of your actions, but any bad actions on the part of the government are deflected to the system. You’re not supposed to notice that the system is owned, operated, and undermined by the government agents screwing you. Just like when the dealer for the shell game cheats its obviously your fault for playing.

I’m just NOT BUYING that it’s possible to conduct a murder investigation that convicts an innocent man without misconduct.

OF COURSE it is! One can construct all manner of extremely-odd-but-still-less-odd-than-real-world-cases examples that would do so.

However, such things should be vanishingly rare, and they clearly are not.

Much more obvious is the well-executed frame job (which can be done entirely by non government actors, so the police and prosecutors are clean). Difficult, but possible.

Those should also be extremely rare (though perhaps not “vanishingly” so). The two explanations combined does not begin to cover the known cases.

Flynn said prosecutors had not committed misconduct, Dewey had been represented by good defense attorneys, and an impartial jury had heard the case but added: “Despite all these things, the system didn’t work.”…

I find this really hard to believe. But of course, they don’t mention the Police… how thorough a job did they do? And how carefully did the prosecution check the case?

I’m just NOT BUYING that it’s possible to conduct a murder investigation that convicts an innocent man without misconduct.

If an immediate purchase of a firearm is not approved, they should scream loud and often until this sort of criminal history check comes back clean.

Interesting supporting observation: why does it appear that we only read about those exonerees who have been locked up for years, decades? Are there no cases of the recently-incarcerated who can demonstrate their innocence within, say, one year? Does the State have an interest, as observed above, in only exonerating those who have been destroyed by the system over long periods of time?

Stockholm Syndrome?

For the masses and the State they enable, it only matters that someone be held accountable. If it happens to be the right person, that’s an added bonus, but certainly not a precondition.

The State is immune to its “errors.” The price of “injustice” falls exclusively on individuals.

As has been said countless times here: all features, no bugs.

Another one for the files of people who have had significant portions of their lives stolen from them yet harbor no ill will toward their oppressors. Why does this appear so universal? Selection bias? Sample size too small? We only hear about the forgiving ones?

The strange conclusion of this phenomenon is that we only need to be thoroughly and unjustifiably abused by the system to come to terms with it.

“I know for a fact” there are other innocent men in prison, Williams said to the crowd gathered after the hearing. “You will not get the proper representation if you are poor,” he added. “A lot of them had to cop out to cases that they knew they was innocent on because they didn’t want to face the jury.”

Which is an indictment of the system that rewards prosecutors and cops for convictions. If prosecutors and cops were truly out for “justice”, they would be doing their damnedest to see that no innocent person was ever prosecuted.

As a friend of mine puts it “If you have convicted an innocent man, that means the real criminal is still out on the street.”