The Broken U.S. Criminal Justice System
Broken Criminal Justice System
America has the best potential to have the best Criminal Justice System in the world. The question is, do we?
The obvious answer is no, and it never has been, Many seem to think it has become broken over the last few years. However, this is nothing more than political hyperbole on the part of both main parties.
If we look back to a couple of hundred years we can see that the Criminal Justice System has never function correctly, at least not the way that it could.
Our CJS seems to be at the mercy of politicians, even when those in charge are not supposed to be political.
It is not limited to race alone. It also includes those who are poor and even those who are simply at odds with those who would use the courts to take what every want through corrupting the system to do their bidding.
I won't even discuss the war crimes against American Indians for that is another writing of it's own merit.
But, if we simply look back over the past two hundred years, we will see more than enough evidence that the CJS has long been broken with little effort to correct what is broken.
List of wrongful convictions in the United States
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wrongful_convictions_in_the_United_States
The fact that many were not exonerated even after being shown to be innocent, only adds to the fact of the broken state of the U.S. CJS.
This on top of the fact that this is in now way a complete list. It is simply a representative list showing some of the cases that have been shown to be incorrect prosecutions and punishments of innocent people.
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- About 10,000 people in the United States may be wrongfully convicted of serious crimes each year, a new study suggests.
The results are based on a survey of 188 judges, prosecuting attorneys, public defenders, sheriffs and police
chiefs in Ohio and 41 state attorneys general.
The study also found that the most important factor leading to wrongful conviction is eyewitness
misidentification.
This information is according to the Ohio State University, https://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/ronhuff.htm
These findings are included in the new book Convicted But Innocent: Wrongful Conviction and Public Policy (Sage Publications, 1996). The book was written by C. Ronald Huff, director of the Criminal Justice Research Center and the School of Public Policy and Management at Ohio State University; Arye Rattner, professor of sociology at the University of Haifa, Israel; and the late Edward Sagarin, who was a professor of sociology at City College and City University of New York.
The survey asked respondents to estimate the prevalence of wrongful conviction in the United States. About 72 percent estimated that less than 1 percent -- but more than zero -- of convictions were of innocent people.
Based on these results, Huff estimated conservatively that 0.5 percent of the 1,993,880 convictions for index
crimes in 1990 were of innocent people. (Index crimes, which are reported by the FBI, are murder and non-negligent
manslaughter, forcible rape, aggravated assault, robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft and arson.)
That would result in an estimated 9,969 wrongful convictions.
Huff said he thinks that number is probably low. "Our sample was stacked in favor of obtaining conservative estimates," Huff said. Most of those surveyed -- including prosecutors and law enforcement officials -- "have every reason to defend the system's accuracy and underestimate error," he said. Only 9 percent of the respondents were public defenders, who might be more critical of the criminal justice system.
Wrongful convictions undermine public confidence in the judicial system and should be viewed with alarm, said Huff.
It troubles Huff that liberals seem more concerned about the issue than conservatives. "Conservatives, too,
should be concerned because it's a public safety issue. The actual offender remains free to victimize other citizens."
An ultimate truth. When innocent people are convicted of crimes, the real criminals always go free to continue committing crimes.
So to break it down. Innocent people are convicted of crimes they did not commit. The are sentenced to prison terms, they are robbed of their life, reputation and even their lives.
They are imprisoned for things from simple crimes to murder, simply for one ugly fact, They received all the justice that they could afford.
Until justice is something that is not a commodity that can be purchased, America will never be the “Land of the Free”. And The Land of the Free is simply a false sense of security.
We have to ask ourselves, what compels any officer of any court to allow a false conviction of any American Citizen?
The raw truth? Because they can, it is not their problem, they have to go by the law, and some will receive compensation, and some from personal political ambition.
Until it is criminal for anyone acting under color of law to allow an innocent person to be wrongfully convicted, then wrongful convictions will continue to occur.
Can the U.S. CJS be fixed? Of course it can. But do fix it we have to remember something. It is the accused who have rights in the court room, not the witnesses or the victims. Remember, some times victims actually have agendas as well.
Many people will not like that I have a said this but it is true.
In order for “justice” to be served, the correct prosecution of the accused must take precedence. Meaning, we have to make sure that the right person has been convicted regardless of whom that may be. Convictions for the sake of convictions simply is not justice and does not even resemble justice.