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To your last point, I would argue the injustices are not misunderstood they are in fact injustices, and I'm talking about details far beyond racial discriminati
by wfo 11y ago
To your last point, I would argue the injustices are not misunderstood they are in fact injustices, and I'm talking about details far beyond racial discrimination, though I don't mean to minimize the consequences of that.
The vast majority of our cases are settled through plea bargains; this is in essence a coerced (we must assume false -- if we are to accept innocent until proven guilty, none of these cases are proved) confession, little different from in banana republics where your signed confession is required for the authorities to recall their torture or confinement. Once a prosecutor has you in his sights your choices are to fight back, demand a trial, and have the prosecutor throw the book at you and ask for the maximum most extreme sentence, try to lock you in a cage for years to be repeatedly beaten and raped and destroy your ability to succeed in society for having the audacity to demand your rights, or accept the punishment the justice system has decided to dole out to you with a plea. So we trust prosecutors to only push cases they truly believe are just. But the promotion scheme for prosecutors is such that those prosecutors who believe any winnable case is a just one get the most convictions, and therefore the most power.
And consider juries; as a juror you are instructed (falsely) that you are required to judge a case simply on the facts and that you must leave your ability to be a human being and do moral reasoning at the door (hence, morality has no place in a courtroom -- the jurors, who decide the case, are explicitly told they may not use it), and lawyers are even legally prevented from informing the jurors of their rights.
I think you're very right about the source of these problems -- they come from lawyers in so much as almost all of our legislators are lawyers, trained into this profession and having gone through all of this before they create laws. But it's not the trial lawyers or judges who created these issues, and many of them get into the game in order to make things better. But I think to succeed in a system requires acceptance of the system; it changes you. I'll concede that it's likely there are many, many people in the legal profession for whom my analysis isn't particularly accurate and I'm encouraged by your vigorous repudiation of my pessimism (I don't want to be right), but I think there's some truth there to what I'm saying. And I'm not suggesting that there is an easy solution; the problems are emergent, systemic, and very deep.