I’m sure the numbers don’t mean a helluva lot to the innocent guy in jail.
They were held in jail if bail wasn’t set or if they couldn’t MAKE bail (how many murder suspects do you think they set bail for?). My original statement is simply that you’re being punished before you’ve even been tried.
Both are relevant to the issue.
I think talking about people who are wrongfully convicted is just confusing the issue. The authority of the government to hold people prior to trial and whether that is right/wrong IMO has nothign to do with the fact that some innocent people have been convicted of crimes.
A more relevant matter would be how many people are held in remand or held because they can’t pay bail who later are proven innocent? O.J. Simpson would be one, and there are many others.
Do you think O.J. should have been held? He did actually try to flee the country to avoid prosecution, so I think the court was acting appropriately in holding him involuntarily since he had already demonstrated that he would attempt to flee prosecution.
You are supposed to be guaranteed a presumption of innocence in this country, but you do not have the right to flee prosecution and the court also has a duty to insure you stand trial for crimes you are accused of.
A good question was earlier asked, do you oppose the entire “arrest” process? Instead of arresting the accused should the police simple drop off a notice informing someone they have been accused of a crime and need to appear in court on XXX date?
How would you propose to address the problem of people (like O.J. Simpson) who attempt to flee prosecution?
How about the police handcuffing suspects at the scene of a crime for their own protection, does the fact that the person has not been convicted of a crime mean the police shouldn’t be able to handcuff that person? Eventhough not handcuffing them could present a serious threat to the health and life of a police officer?
Maybe you can tell me where the line should be drawn. I’ve already conceded that overwhelming evidence against a person would justify holding him in most cases. People are held for much less than “overwhelming” evidence. They’re held over pretty damn flimsy evidence on many occasions, and when bail is set, many people can’t make it. Mistakes happen often enough that it is an issue that should be looked at. It appears it is being looked at to some degree:
I feel that it’s unfair to minimize the problems in our justice system when these shortcomings are ruining people’s lives.
You’re still not getting it. The Innocence Project is about exonerating people already convicted of crimes, not about stopping the cops from holding people in custody pending trial. Yes, people are sometimes convicted on flimsy evidence. That’s a miscarriage of justice.
Is it also a miscarriage of justice to arrest someone accused of murder and hold them in jail until they are either convicted or accquited? If they are wrongfully convicted, the miscarriage of justice isn’t that they were held in jail before they were convicted, it’s that they were convicted at all.
You seem to be under the impression that the cops can just arrest anyone they like and hold them in custody even though there’s no evidence against them.
But that’s not true. The cops can arrest you for a short period, but within a few days they must either charge you or release you. If they charge you with a crime, they have to convice a Grand Jury that there is enough evidence to indict you. If they manage to indict you, they have to convince a judge that you’re either dangerous or a flight risk, or they have to release you pending trial. But that doesn’t have to be “overwhelming” evidence. They only have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you’re guilty before they sentence you. If they had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you’re guilty before they TRY you, wouldn’t THAT be the trial?
There are ever increasing levels of justification that the government has to meet to take your case to the next level, but the standards for the lower levels are easier to meet. So it’s easier to get a search warrant than to arrest someone, easier to arrest someone that to indict someone, easier to indict someone than to hold them in custody, easier to hold them than to convict them.
So what exactly are you upset about again?
Well, if you have a plan that addresses these shortcomings while not ruining more lives by failing to protect society from criminals, we’d love to hear it. Sure, the system’s not perfect, but you’re not going to get anywhere by only looking at one aspect of it. Arranging it so that no one who might be innocent is ever jailed or required to make bail has the unavoidable consequence of allowing lots of dangerous people to roam free and do lots of harm to other innocent people.
It’s a trade-off. Our system is already heavily slanted to protecting the rights of the accused (compare with some other countries and you’ll see what I mean). The cost of reasonable public safety is a small percentage of innocent people getting arrested, and sometimes convicted. The cost of making sure no innocent person is ever arrested is a huge percentage of guilty people doing lots of bad things with impunity. You seem unwilling to accept the former cost, but are you willing to accept the latter one? You can’t have it both ways.
I’m not saying there isn’t a problem, I just don’t know what is to really be done about it. Judges in a properly functioning court system need to have a good bit of discretion, I’m in favor of decisions on bail/remand being left to a judge’s discretion.
Sometimes the judge will make a mistake. That doesn’t justify throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Or even justify changing anything at all, the possibility that mistakes are made in the criminal justice system is “built in” via the apeals process which is there to correct any mistakes that do happen.
In general the law holds that someone can be held with bail or on remand almost at the whim of a judge, so there’s not even really a matter of a mistake being made when someone is held pre-trial, it’s just a decision the judge has come to that he feels is in the best interests of justice. We pay judges and appoint/elect judges to make determinations like that.
Being remanded before trial doesn’t ruin someone’s life, it’s temporary and comes to an end if the trial finds the person not-guilty.
The fact that some people end up getting convicted and sent to prison wrongly, in my opinion, doesn’t really come in to the discussion of bail/remand. The hearing that makes that determination is in no way associated with the process that decides guilt or innocence (in fact it will often not even be in the same court room or involve the same judge.)
Well, if I were held in jail for a crime I didn’t commit – even if I was found not guilty – I could lose my job. People are held for months, depending on the severity of the crime. Losing my job and putting my mortgage and all on hold could ruin my life.
Not to mention the bad reputation part. A rape accusation is a tough one to shake.
I don’t know the answer either, but I find the viewpoints on it interesting. Maybe someone could move this to great debates.
The mere physical description of the perpetrator by the victim “generally resembling” a suspect is not enough for an arrest.
You suggested that it was enough for an arrest, in an effort to buttress your point about how pre-trial detention can be unjust.
I’m telling you that your scenario is not realistic. No magistrate would issue a warrant or bind someone over for trial on merely that evidence.
In other words, no one would ever be arrested and held for trial merely for matching a victim’s description. There would have to be other evidence.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
A good question was earlier asked, do you oppose the entire “arrest” process? Instead of arresting the accused should the police simple drop off a notice informing someone they have been accused of a crime and need to appear in court on XXX date?
[QUOTE]
Background point - This used to be the exact case in NYC during the old “jail overcrowding” days of the 70s and 80s. A complex formula was constructed, consisting of the nature of the suspected offense (usually minor but that bar was raised higher as jail conditions worsened) combined with a point system for the individual being arrested - Job? permanent address? chewing light bulbs at the time of arrest?
Arresting officers and a supervisor would fill out the form, and if a certain point threshold were not reached, the individual would be given a Desk Appearance Ticket - telling them to appear in court on XXX date.
Before too long, these were called Dis-Appearance Tickets, for the obvious reasons.
Kalhoun -
While our justice system is flawed with examples innocent people being incarcerated, convicted and possibly being executed - so is our health care system, our education system, and, among others, our motor vehicle licensing system (why let a 92 year old have a license without at least an eye exam each year?). I realize that “flaw by association” is not a valid arguement, rational discussion obligates the individual to propose improvements. Without those ideas, we will not see our justice system improve, or any other of our flawed systems.
It is very true that each of us is subjected to being “abused” by the system at any given moment. On your Saturday morning drive to the grocery store, you can be perceived by a police officer to have run a stop sign. If he (or she) then perceives an addtional violation - you could easily find yourself incarcerated for the weekend. Hey, If it’s a holiday… you could be in a holding cell other innocent parties for three days before you see a judge or even a lawyer. (YMMV by jurisdiction). This is reality, and yes, it ain’t pretty. And yes, rich people fare better than poor, etc. What we need is concrete suggestions on improvements, not broad based generalizations.
FYI - NYC did away with “dis-appearance tickets” not due to the obvious reason that they were silly, but because jail conditions permitted.