I have seen what they are talking about in the court system. I just found out recently here that, even if a criminal confesses to a crime to their lawyer, the lawyer will still try to defend them. Apparently winning the case is more important than serving justice.
I had heard that this was different in other western countries, but I admit I have almost no knowledge in that are.
You came in here and asked a board full of Americans if they are blind to the truth. If we say no, you can say they are blind to it. If we say yes, well, then you’ve confirmed your theory. We are given no answer.
Of course, the example given is poor. The answer to “Have you stopped hitting your wife?” is “I have never hit my wife.” The problem is assuming a yes or no answer.
Anyways, you were a bit offensive. A better way to word what you wanted to ask is: “Do you think the adversarial system in America, particularly in politics, hinders people’s abilities to find the truth? Has it affected you?”
is that allways true? or are innocent people intimated by the DA’s, who threatens the defendant with the highest possible punishmentif the defendant does not accept the plea?
I was with 2 American friends last week.
I mentioned to them that a friends wife came out and found the compound security guard in her garden. Apparently she had asked him to take out something and forgot to lock the gate behind her and he I suppose came back to see if there was anything else to go. We were discussing compound security at the time.
I was flabbergasted when one of them asked ‘is she going to sue’ and the other agreed:confused:
You understand that television shows are fictional, right?
Also, there is absolutely no way that every criminal case could be resolved by a jury trial. In my state the average court handles at least a thousand criminal matters a year. A jury trial takes a minimum of one day, and probably more like two – and that’s for a relatively simple case. A more complex case may take weeks of time for the defendant, the witnesses, the lawyers, the Court and the jury members. There simply aren’t enough days in the year to hold jury trials on every case. It would be wasteful the spend that time on a trial when the parties could agree on a just resolution of the case.
Also, both sides have to agree to a plea bargain. If it’s not in the defendant’s best interest to agree to it, they don’t have to. Defendants and defense attorneys have to compare the leniency of the deal being offered them against the risk of conviction if they go to trial. So much of the time the defendant has as much or more motivation to enter into a plea deal than the prosecution. Juries can hand down much harsher sentences than what a plea agreement offers – an agreement is a sure thing.
I put the quizzed smiley because I was thinking you were referring to the post where Finn ( I think ) who called Arab men ‘Sexist pigs’, and I thought you were referring to me. I misunderstood your ‘hitting the wife’ remark.
By the way, this seems to be the post that upset Marmite. It seems that he wasn’t able to refute it, and would now like to debate a bigoted argument that he found on the web about how Americans are somehow mentally defective.
Damn, why does the official Iranian translators disagree with the obvious truth value of your claim? I bet they’re Americans!
Standard fact checking:
-the country’s name is “The Arab Republic of Egypt.”
-the country’s official language is Arabic.
-the country was conquered by Arab forces roughly a millennium and a half ago and substantial genetic influence resulted from that time period.
-and of course Egypt has been part of the Arab League since it was formed (the league, not Egypt).
Damn those Americans, they can spot contradictions, too!
Oh, and your argument seems to revolve strangely around the fact that I currently live in Texas. Prejudice based on geography is soooooo 20th century.
You’re actually highlighting one of the good things about the adversarial system, along with the idea that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty. It’s not a defense attorney’s place or job to be judge and jury for their clients. It’s also not a defense attorney’s job to act as a surrogate for the police or the state. Since the state is seeking to deprive someone of money (through a fine), their freedom or even their life, it is the state’s responsibility to prove their guilt through evidence and argument, beyond a reasonable doubt. While a defense attorney or defense firm may take pride in their skill at argument and persuasion, their job is not to serve justice. Their job is to serve their client, within their ethical responsibilities. If a prosecutor cannot prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt to a judge or jury, then by law, justice requires that the defendant be deemed not guilty.
Oh, and willthekittensurive?, neither “Law and Order” or “The Wire” are particularly realistic in terms of portraying what actually happens in the criminal court system. Criminal trials or proceedings weren’t actually featured all that much in “The Wire” and “Law and Order” is focused on drama, not facts or legal procedure.
As an attorney, if a client confesses to me and I allow them to perjure themselves to the Court, I can be disbarred. If a client confesses to me and to the Court, I have a responsibility to get them the best deal I can. Even guilty people can be treated unfairly.
Oh, and if the OP is an example of fair and honest debating, no thanks.
There does seem to be more passion and polarisation in the States than a lot of other Western countries I’m familiar with. In part I blame infotainment that a lot of you receive for news. This doesn’t help with the general tone of debate.
There also seems to be a tendency to claim “Anti-American” (insert another country as required) quicker than other places.
That’s all very general stuff though and my years here reading you all debate has re-enforced those points to me and also blown them out of the water.
Americans have their own political culture and it does seem to be slightly more aggressive(for want of a better word) that others. That’s not to say any way is better just different.
Look at the Brits in their election thread. There was a lot of anti-Thatcher/Tory/Labour/Brown stuff going on but the debate had a different tone than most US-centric political debate.
Anyway that’s my views for what it’s worth, which isn’t much I’ll admit
If you replaced “Americans” with “Canadians” in that quote it’d be every bit as true. If people here are partocularly governed by facts, I sure haven’t noticed.
Incidentally, as it happens, tomorrow I’m having coffee with a former coworker. She’s Egyptian, and has always described herself as an Arab. Her last name is the Arabic word for “fortunate.”
It sounds to me like in the process of “discussing compound security” there was some complaint beyond “oh noes, the guard came back into my garden!” Is there perhaps something you’re leaving out of this story? Some pattern of the security company not doing what they’ve been contracted to do?
Do people not sue each other in Egypt? Or do you just have to suck it down when someone screws you over?
Just as a defense attorney is satisfied when his guilty client is acquitted, I have read of a few cases where prosecutors are reluctant to retract convictions (their “successes”) even after learning they are faulty. Don’t know how common, but it does happen.
As to OP’s point, no one informed could disagree that “(many) Americans have a problem with the truth.” What I don’t know is whether the problem is really unique to America…
But what is the point? The “article” starts off with the notion that Americans have a problem with truth and then includes the word “truth” in almost every other sentence like it’s a buzzword. Yet nowhere is “truth” defined. What is this “truth” that the author, and one presumes, Marmite Lover, that Americans have a problem with or are desperately afraid/ignorant of? In the article’s rush to generalize and stereotype as much and as wide as possible, it’s become completely inscrutable. It’s basically gibberish.
Willthekittensurvive, I think that the US legal system is substantially different from the Dutch system in a number of crucial respects, including (this is why it is far more political) the fact that key players in the US system are elected officials, whereas in the Netherlands, they are all appointed. Another key difference is that the US has juries and Holland does not, whereas the notion that you are innocent until proven guilty is an element of both systems (unlike what Camus seems to suggest).
This clearly makes for somewhat different dynamics, but it does not mean at all that Dutch prosecutors don’t go out of their way to convict the innocent. Surely you’ll remember the recent hubbub about the release of nurse Lucia de B. as well as of the two guys convicted of raping and killing a lady in Putten, or the scandal around the Schiedammer Parkmoord where evidence exhonorating the defendant was withheld from the judge as a result of which Cees B. spent years in prison, convicted of a crime he did not commit. [cue A-Team tune]. So it seems that, just like your knowledge of the US criminal law system is based on TV series, so your ‘Dutch sensibilities’ are based on quicksand too.
I never said or suggested that the Dutch criminal system did not include the presumption of innocence. I never even mentioned Dutch courts or the inquisitorial system. I did not conflate the adversarial system with the presumption of innocence, but I apologize if I was unclear.
