4 ms·
This is not the first article like this. Or the second, or the third, or the hundredth. There is plenty of evidence of the widespread disenfranchisement of citi
by wfo 11y ago
This is not the first article like this. Or the second, or the third, or the hundredth. There is plenty of evidence of the widespread disenfranchisement of citizens who are pushed through the criminal justice system; long form journalism from major newspapers, video records, books written after years of research, if you're having trouble finding evidence at this point it's because you're willfully ignorant.
People don't know if evidence is suppressed by the prosecution until much later, a journalist digs deep and finds out. We have evidence that journalists are able to do this in many cases. It is not a logical leap to assume there are many more undiscovered cases, it is a logical fallacy to assume otherwise.
We are allowed to be outraged about (in fact should be outraged about), yes, even one case. This judge as quoted is completely disgusting. Publicly stating anyone accused of a crime has no rights as a judge and then proceeding to take them away is not even close to comparable to following the law and letting people free on bond and having them commit crimes. One is an unfortunate aftereffect of having a justice system that does not simply execute everyone, one is the wholesale destruction of the rule of law and every protection citizens have. It's worrying to me that you would even draw that equivalence for the purpose of argument.
Not long ago there was a story about a head prosecutor in Louisiana who was a member of the KKK and was quoted as saying something to the effect of 'God wants me to punish black people, my only regrets are that the black people I executed didn't suffer more' who unsurprisingly fabricates evidence constantly. What is troubling and telling is that you as a lawyer are not horrified by this and instead say "well, n=1 so who cares, show me another, at which point I'll say n=2, and we can play this game until we get to n=10000, and then I'll say 'it's just some bad apples'".