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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGo to Trial: Crash the Justice System
AFTER years as a civil rights lawyer, I rarely find myself speechless. But some questions a woman I know posed during a phone conversation one recent evening gave me pause: What would happen if we organized thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people charged with crimes to refuse to play the game, to refuse to plea out? What if they all insisted on their Sixth Amendment right to trial? Couldnt we bring the whole system to a halt just like that?
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But in this era of mass incarceration when our nations prison population has quintupled in a few decades partly as a result of the war on drugs and the get tough movement 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. Most people charged with crimes forfeit their constitutional rights and plead guilty.
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, said Timothy Lynch, director of the criminal justice project at the libertarian Cato Institute. In other words: the system is rigged.
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On the phone, Susan said she knew exactly what was involved in asking people who have been charged with crimes to reject plea bargains, and press for trial. Believe me, I know. Im asking what we can do. Can we crash the system just by exercising our rights?
The answer is yes. The system of mass incarceration depends almost entirely on the cooperation of those it seeks to control. 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. Not everyone would have to join for the revolt to have an impact; as the legal scholar Angela J. Davis noted, if the number of people exercising their trial rights suddenly doubled or tripled in some jurisdictions, it would create chaos.
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Much more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/go-to-trial-crash-the-justice-system.html
Now this is an interesting idea. Maybe it would help get people to take a hard look at the number of people being arrested and going to jail. It also might highlight the reasons people are arrested.
Turbineguy
(37,361 posts)it's obviously more attractive to go directly to jail. Under this system a defendant would spend more time waiting for a trail than the sentence would be if they are found guilty.
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)CAPHAVOC
(1,138 posts)Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)...the injustice system would come to a screeching halt.
Of course, it is a rigged game. Prosecutors engage in massive overcharging, turning one event into multiple felonies carrying a potential decades-long sentence, then lean on defendants to cop a plea.
Take a guy growing pot at home who also owns a gun and who talked about his crop on the phone: Manufacture of marijuana, possession of marijuana, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, possession of a firearm while committing a felony, using a communications device in the commission of a felony.
Does he have children? Add child abuse. (Although why having a growing plant in your home constitutes child abuse is not easily explained.)
What's really ridiculous is watching as prosecutors charge someone with crimes earning decades in prison, then plea bargain down to probation or a few months in jail. Really? This person was so dangerous that she needed decades in prison to keep us safe, but now she isn't?
And, of course, the plea bargain culture encourages, nay, is premised on intimidating people to become informants. I don't loathe people who are pressured into becoming snitches; I loathe the people who are doing the pressuring.