Larry Gude said:
...I DON'T care if the rules get bent to nail a bad guy. I DO care if they get used to frame a good guy. These are not mutually exclusive goals.
And you will probably not like what I'm gonna write, but there ARE no 'good guys' or 'bad guys' in court. There is only guilt or innocence. I *do* care if the rules get bent to nail a 'bad guy', for two reasons - one, it's up to the court to decide if he IS a 'bad guy' and two, if someone can bend the rules to harm the "guilty" (in quotes because law enforcement has no right to declare guilt) then the same can be done for the innocent.
I use two of the anecdotes as points of reference - my sister's rape case (different by twenty years per her parole case) and my roommate's rape case.
Your tree analogy - my sister. No denying the fact that she was beaten, burned and raped for over three hours. The physical evidence was undeniable. The cop that took her pictures left the room to vomit. It was that bad.
What needed doing, was to PROVE to the world that the perpetrator was a popular, handsome, rich fraternity president - and the charge came from someone without the world's greatest reputation. She had to leave school, because people were making her life miserable, and the women on campus refused to support her. She went IN to court believing she would lose.
As far as anyone was concerned - SHE WAS the 'bad guy'. No question. She was falsely accusing a man with an impeccable reputation. Everyone was sure that if Ted were found guilty, a *travesty* of justice would occur. But it didn't. When that affidavit came in, the judge was furious, to put it mildly, because the defendant was trying to pass himself as not only completely innocent of an outrageous crime, but trying to make the whole thing my sister's fault.
So, should someone have done something to make sure that the 'bad guy' didn't win?
Second case, which I mentioned - my roommate. Lived with his girlfriend for several years, had a child (which she had custody of, but neglected horribly - imagine driving downtown and finding your two-year-old walking the streets ten miles from home, because mom forgot about her) with her. She was visiting the downstairs neighbors, and I told him to forget about her, she was only there because he was home. He went to see her ANYWAY. Later that night, cops come, take him out in shackles in front of the neighbors. Paper across the street makes it front page news.
You know the details - he didn't do it. But ALL OF THE EVIDENCE pointed to him, because he DID have sex with her.
MONTHS later, people still grumbled about how the 'rapist' got away with it on some technicality ( a technicality known as 'innocence'). Should someone have done something, to ensure the "bad guy" got what he had coming?
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You are right, with respect to two things - courts hand down sentences that are too lenient - they're so concerned about investigating every cause, they offer sentences which don't punish perpetrators enough. And for the second - in the RARE instance of egregious crimes with clear evidence, and people getting off on a missed Miranda rights reading - yeah, that is sickening. It doesn't happen often. And the rules are there for the same reason that we have rules of conduct for federal workers - they protect rights of others.
Larry Gude said:
I think Furhman should have been suspended or kicked off the force. I think OJ should be looking forward to his first parole hearing. We BOTH know there is a crooked cop AND a double murderer on the streets.
Actually, Furhman is probably making more money writing books these days. I do not KNOW any such thing. I think it is true - I think he did the crimes. And that's tragic. I also don't believe in mob rule or lynchings, either. I do think the falsified evidence HELPED OJ's case.
I was just reading about the Boston Massacre - the incident which John Adams would describe as the foundation for the Revolution. You may know that Adams *defended* the British - and most of them were found not guilty by an American jury. Because despite what everyone "knew" - British soldiers firing on civilians - they were not held accountable because an angry mob armed with clubs attacked them, unlike the depictions of popular lithographs at the time.
The tree is a metaphor for a person. The tree, the person, is still on the ground. We know from the shotgun blow to the back of the head they did not get on the ground by themselves. The guy who killed five other people the same way, same MO, same motive and opportunity who walks because he wasn't read his rights when the cops burst in while he was cleaning the blood off his gun is still a killer.
A 'little' extreme, and tragic if it happened. A dead body doesn't make the nearest man guilty. One trial I was empanelled on, the defendant fled when ordered by the cops to freeze. The judge told us that flight does not equal guilt - we are allowed to weigh that into our decision, but that people flee for many reasons. A fallen tree only means the tree is fallen - it remains to be seen who felled it.
I realize I sound like a broken record - but the reason some of these seemingly absurd procedures exist is to prevent abuse or to ensure rights - and it usually gets adopted because *someone* abused a weakness in the system previously.
Larry Gude said:
Why do you suppose people aren't doing, as you say, their jobs?
Ask the cop who has been back to the same house 5 times for a domestic why he didn't do everything just so the last time when the old man finally offed her.
You and I have difficulty discussing things because we approach issues differently. I don't paint everything with the same brush. If 20% of cops don't do their job, it doesn't invalidate the work of 80% of them - and I don't know that 20% is the right number. I just know it doesn't take a lot to screw it up for everyone else. If just 5% of the kids at a high school are violent gang members - and 95% are good kids - that's maybe 4 dozen or more kids, and that's enough to make the place very dangerous.
How did your sister break parole by being assaulted?
They were two separate situations, separated by more than twenty years.
Larry Gude said:
As far as proof, it takes no proof to know, intuitively, there are tons of career criminals who know how to beat the system. Back to the tree; billions of dollars in illegal drugs, 16,000 homicides a year, countless assaults and robberies. That they get away with it does nothing for the victim. My sympathies tend toward them, those wronged, than the tender sensibilities of the offender.
And you will get not one word of argument from me on that. Catch the bastages. Lock them up. Fact is, most of these crimes either go underreported or go unsolved. Ever have something stolen from your car? Do you bother to report it? If you do, do you really think the cops are gonna sweat out finding out who swiped your CD player?
When I lived in Boston, nearly everyone I knew had been mugged at least once - and no one caught the perps. I witnessed a stabbing while parking my car one day - and the perp got away. You're right - lots of crooks get away with it, but I'm not ready to lay the blame at the feet of the courts yet. Bring them in, show me the security footage, show me the prints on the gun.
Larry Gude said:
You've yet to read me say cops should lie, plant evidence or frame people.
No, but you've repeatedly said something which to my ears is equivalent - it wouldn't bother you to see it happen if the person was a bad guy.
Larry Gude said:
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I'm talking about improper search warrants. I'm talking about cases tossed because the weapon was found and the rules weren't followed to a T. I'm talking about real, live violent criminals getting away with murder.
I don't see this happen as much as the tabloids would suggest. You know, I used to know a guy in college visiting from the Middle East - he was convinced that colleges were places where people got shot, and tended to walk across campus close to buildings to avoid sniper fire, because he'd read some true stories of murder and mayhem. For every crook who gets off on a technicality, many more do not - it's the outrageous exceptions that make the news - but sadly, many get weak sentences, instead.
Larry Gude said:
People in DC live in abject fear of opening their mouths about murder because they know they may well be killed because of the system.
NOT quite so much as fear of the thugs who DON'T GET CAUGHT. *Those* are the ones posing the greatest threat - not bums getting churned through a revolving door of a court.
My brother still insists that a cop entrapped him because he was watching a bar parking lot. He thinks he was framed. I asked him what his BAC level was, and he insists it doesn't matter because he never should have been stopped.
