It's Not Just The Fourth Amendment Being Trampled
This sentence from an article about Debra Nelson, the judge in the George Zimmerman trial, caught my eye:
The Orlando Sentinel described Nelson’s toughness by noting that she once sentenced a robber to 27 years in prison after he rejected a 20-year deal from a prosecutor.
This is not "toughness". This is an increasingly common tactic adopted by prosecutors and condoned by way too many judges to short circuit the criminal justice process and deprive people of their rights.
This tactic of offering plea deals and then punishing defendants who don't roll over and accept them needs to be stopped and the judges who continue to engage in this sort of behavior need to be removed from the bench.
A trial in front of a jury of one's peers is not a "burden" on the state -- it is a right that every defendant has that cannot be taken away by the government. For one thing, the defendant might be innocent. But even if the defendant is guilty, he or she still has the right to a trial. That's how our society works.
The government doesn't get to punish people for exercising their Constitutional rights while rewarding those who roll over to prosecutors and give up their rights.
One argument is that plea deals are a way of saving resources because courts would be overwhelmed if we gave every defendant a trial. But I would argue that there's too many out-of-control over-zealous prosecutors clogging up the courts with defendants who shouldn't be there at all.
If we really do need to reduce court expenses, perhaps exercising some common-sense discretion in which "crimes" are prosecuted might be a better solution than denying people their Constitutional rights. I wonder how long the government's misguided "War On Some Drugs" could last if prosecutors were required to go to trial and prove their case for every person who was ever picked up for possession of a joint.
Instead, police and prosecutors find it easy to accuse people of the most petty of "crimes" simply because they are able to browbeat the person into accepting a plea deal under the threat of more prison time if they refuse to go along.
In the wake of revelations about the NSA's surveillance programs that clearly demonstrate how out-of-control our government really is, perhaps it is time to examine the widespread violations of the rest of the Bill of Rights too.
The Orlando Sentinel described Nelson’s toughness by noting that she once sentenced a robber to 27 years in prison after he rejected a 20-year deal from a prosecutor.
This is not "toughness". This is an increasingly common tactic adopted by prosecutors and condoned by way too many judges to short circuit the criminal justice process and deprive people of their rights.
This tactic of offering plea deals and then punishing defendants who don't roll over and accept them needs to be stopped and the judges who continue to engage in this sort of behavior need to be removed from the bench.
A trial in front of a jury of one's peers is not a "burden" on the state -- it is a right that every defendant has that cannot be taken away by the government. For one thing, the defendant might be innocent. But even if the defendant is guilty, he or she still has the right to a trial. That's how our society works.
The government doesn't get to punish people for exercising their Constitutional rights while rewarding those who roll over to prosecutors and give up their rights.
One argument is that plea deals are a way of saving resources because courts would be overwhelmed if we gave every defendant a trial. But I would argue that there's too many out-of-control over-zealous prosecutors clogging up the courts with defendants who shouldn't be there at all.
If we really do need to reduce court expenses, perhaps exercising some common-sense discretion in which "crimes" are prosecuted might be a better solution than denying people their Constitutional rights. I wonder how long the government's misguided "War On Some Drugs" could last if prosecutors were required to go to trial and prove their case for every person who was ever picked up for possession of a joint.
Instead, police and prosecutors find it easy to accuse people of the most petty of "crimes" simply because they are able to browbeat the person into accepting a plea deal under the threat of more prison time if they refuse to go along.
In the wake of revelations about the NSA's surveillance programs that clearly demonstrate how out-of-control our government really is, perhaps it is time to examine the widespread violations of the rest of the Bill of Rights too.