How To Crash the US Justice System: Demand a Trial 897
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by
Soulskill
from the pleading-the-sixth dept.
from the pleading-the-sixth dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The U.S. Bill of Rights guarantees the accused basic safeguards, including a fair and speedy jury trial, but in this era of mass incarceration — when our nation's prison population has quintupled in a few decades — these rights are, for the overwhelming majority of people hauled into courtrooms across America, theoretical. More than 90 percent of criminal cases are never tried before a jury, in part because the Supreme Court ruled in 1978 that threatening someone with life imprisonment for a minor crime in an effort to induce him to forfeit a jury trial did not violate his Sixth Amendment right to trial. 'The truth is that government officials have deliberately engineered the system to assure that the jury trial system established by the Constitution is seldom used,' says Timothy Lynch, director of the criminal justice project at the libertarian Cato Institute. Now Susan Burton, head of 'A New Way of Life' (PDF), is helping to start a movement to demand restoration of Americans' basic civil and human rights by asking people who have been charged with crimes to reject plea bargains, and press for trial. 'Can we crash the system just by exercising our rights?' Burton says if everyone charged with crimes suddenly exercised his constitutional rights, there would not be enough judges, lawyers or prison cells to deal with the ensuing tsunami of litigation."
Re:Injustice (Score:5, Funny)
My kingdom for a mod point.
Not enough jail cells? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Injustice (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It helps to be a friend and ally of the Preside (Score:2, Funny)
Corzine is following the truism that "all politicians should be limited to two terms - one in office and one in prison." Obama is just taking a detour, the long way round.
Re:Injustice (Score:4, Funny)
Jeepers - that's worse than the Java class libraries!!
Re:jury trials cost more money (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Uh, no (Score:4, Funny)
The same could have been said about the USSR, it stood more than 80 years, even withstood the Nazi onslaught...yet they aren't here anymore. Egypt, Libya, their leaders ruled for decades...gone. Are you really so arrogant you think the mighty empire can never fall? tell that to the Romans. Black males are already at 30%+ unemployment and you literally have tens of millions on uneducated and undereducated that simply don't have the IQ to become lawyers or doctors, what are you gonna do? herd them into camps?
The simple fact is thanks to globalism most of the poor in the USA simply cannot trade their labor for capital because their labor simply isn't required. between third world sweatshops and automation there simply is no need for them which means your system of capitalism no longer is functional. Why do you think prisons are bursting? poverty and hopelessness breeds crime like a cancer.
Like it or not the clock is winding down on the USA empire, we let corps become too big and corrupt after we bombed out the competition in WWII and now there simply aren't any jobs for those millions as they all went to Asia. You gonna print everyone a check? Pay them for busy work? You already do for about 20-30% of the low wage jobs through federal assistance, hell Walmart even shows new hires how to get on food stamps. The system is simply not sustainable and while they talk "jobless recovery" aka "hey the rich are living like Gods!" the top 10% now hold more than 92% of the wealth. You simply can't have those levels of rampant inequality long term. things fall apart, the center does not hold, watch what happens when the unemployment actual rates, not the BS they feed you, hits 40%+, just watch.