How is not having a trial the same as presumption of innocence at trial?
The phrase “presumption of innocence” does not apply only in the trial phase. It applies at all times. That’s why the police need probable cause to arrest, and so on.
I actually agree in part with something DrCube said, the first role of any justice system is creating order. It being fair has always been a secondary concern, and in many societies not a concern at all.
In some ways this makes intrinsic sense. Society mostly works if it’s orderly but unfair. But if there is no order then you don’t really have a society, you have a collapsing State as seen many times throughout history.
In the United States my point was that largely our criminal justice system is fair. I have a laundry list of reasons I believe this is so:
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No one is formally above the law. While an adversarial system and the realities of all human society always make it better to be a rich defendant than a poor one, rich people do get punished for crimes. Our rich aren’t tried in a noble’s court.
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We have robust constitutional protections, evidentiary rules, right to counsel, and etc which protect even the worst of the accused. Very bad guys have escaped justice because of improperly obtained evidence or coerced confessions.
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Statistically very few convictions are ever overturned. I think we could do a lot better on this.
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As to overturned, we have a robust appellate system that does in fact catch and correct errors.
Are there unfair aspects to how it’s all implemented? Sure. But I never said it’s perfectly fair–it could be better and should be.
A few things that really concern me about recent police events are:
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Lack of recognition that a prosecutor is an agent of the State whose job it is to see justice done, and to properly manage State resources. It is incompetence for a prosecutor to bring charges when he doesn’t believe he can prevail in court. But the “other side” here say it is just proof that blacks cannot get justice. Blacks can get justice, but it’s unreasonable to expect a prosecutor to fight an unwinnable case for them. A prosecutor isn’t a private attorney, he works for all of us, not just one of us. This political climate has lead to “show grand juries” which injure the legitimacy of the grand jury.
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Lack of any acknowledgement that most of the individuals in the most recent publicized police shootings were unequivocally committing crimes. Does that mean they deserved to be shot? Of course not, but to me it’s odd that we want to ascribe perfect innocence to criminals and disbelieve anything the police might say.
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Lack of any recognition that it is intrinsically un-American for a mob to pressure a prosecutor into prosecuting someone against their better judgment. Just such mob mentality lead to stupid prosecutions in Florida (of Zimmerman), which was a complete waste of State resources on a case that would never prevail.
Also like usual offenderati and firebrands focus on stupid issues. The most meaningful criminal justice reforms we could implement would be:
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Vast curtailment of no-knock warrants, to only situations when an officer can articulate a very strong fear that the suspects must be served in a no-knock fashion due to threat to life/limb. Much of the worst incidents of police on citizen situations in which innocent civilians have been hurt are directly related to the vast increase in no-knock warrants. No-knock warrants are vastly more injurious to liberty than police having riot gear and APCs (items that are actually defensive and generally less dangerous than a side arm.)
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Abolition of local prosecutors and elected prosecutors. Prosecutors should all work for the State or Federal government, and should be appointed regionally. They should be hired through a civil service process.
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Abolition of elected judges.
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Abolition of small police departments and departments with tons of overlapping jurisdiction. I think police should be organized at a State level. Standardized training and pay. I’d be okay with counties and municipalities with significant populations (say > 100,000) being allowed to organize their own police forces, but in general a 50 person police force with a police chief appointed by a local politician that only local political insiders have heard of (aka the mayor of a small town) is just bad news to begin with.
I think I agree with those last four suggestions.
As for you basic claim that our criminal system is largely fair and just: Sixty percent is “largely.” But it’s not really fair and just. Same for 75%. Same for 90%. Especially if the deck is always stacked against Bob and toward Alice.
As for Mike Brown and Eric Garner “unequivocally committing crimes.” Well, Garner was unequivocally breaking the law, but a misdemeanor is not a felony is not a capital crime. Mike Brown? The evidence is not really that clear, but again, petty theft is not a capital crime.
John Crawford was standing in Walmart. Tamir Rice was a minor playing with a toy gun. Darrien Hunt was basically being a weirdo.
So where’s your majority?