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350. Anonymous - 2008-04-07 14:36:32 |
| American Police interrogation methods are utterly barbaric and wrongheaded. So about par for the course for this country. |
 349. Rose Colored Glasses - 2008-04-07 14:35:37 |
The cops want to convict everyone they arrest.The prosecutor wants to win every case, and the only wins are convictions. Convicting on all charges is preferred to conviction on only some of the charges.
The judge wants convictions, despite protests to the contrary. Imagine a newly-sworn judge whose first case ended in acquittal, and then the second, and the third, and so on and so on. How many losses would his employer tolerate before he got yanked? So, yes, the judge wants convictions.
What about the defense attorney? He makes his best money by drawing out the process as long as he can, collecting all the fees he can along the way, and then getting a conviction, which lets him hope to shake some more coing from the money tree on appeal. There is only one side in the courtroom, and that is the government’s side. They even pick the jury they like -- the judge, prosecutor, and defender all working in collusion to ’improve’ the jury more than a random selection, which by definition cannot be improved upon. The judge is not bound by the jury’s decision, so the jury really is there just for show, a pretense of fairness.
What side is the accused on? He doesn’t have a side, he’s alone.
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348. Alan Jenkins - 2008-04-06 08:18:19 |
Fixing Our Criminal Injustice System
Two important reports released in the last two weeks point to a critical challenge facing the next president and his or her attorney general, as well as states across the nation; fixing our broken criminal justice system to serve the interests of fairness, crime prevention and rehabilitation.
First, the Pew Center on the States released a devastating report, One in 100; Behind Bars in America, finding that more than one in every 100 adults is now incarcerated in a US prison or jail. The numbers are 1 in 54 for men, 1 in 36 for Latino men, and 1 in 15 for African-American men.
A week later, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination released its review of U.S. compliance with an important treaty on the elimination of discrimination. The committee found that racial bias affects many U.S. systems and institutions and, particularly, our criminal justice system. The committee identified a number of concerns, including;
That “persistent systemic inadequacies” in the appointment of lawyers for poor people accused of crimes disproportionately harms people of color;
That young people of color are especially likely to be sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole;
That race, particularly of the victim, plays a powerful role in determining who receives the death penalty in America, according to data from the American Bar Association [http://www.abanet.org/moratorium/assessmentproject/keyfindings.doc] and others.
That laws denying the right to vote to people with past felony convictions disproportionately disenfranchise African Americans; and
That the lack of adequate anti-discrimination training for law enforcement officials and judges remains a persistent obstacle to the fair administration of justice.
The U.N. Committee also noted the lack of adequate U.S. systems for remedying bias. Currently, for example, there is no effective way to challenge systematic racial bias in policing, prosecution, or sentencing, because doing so generally requires proof that identifiable actors in the criminal justice system specifically intended to harm people of a particular race. But that standard of proof is not only virtually impossible to satisfy—since it requires proving someone’s subjective intentions; it also fails to address the lion’s share of unequal treatment in our justice system, which is less an intentional conspiracy and more a mounting confluence of implicit, societal, and institutional biases that lead to profoundly unjust results.
Together, these reports expose two interrelated and unacceptable trends; warehousing over rehabilitation and bias over equal justice. The priorities that should drive our justice system—crime prevention, protection of the public, and fair treatment for all—have given way to an unwise and unequal approach that the Pew Center has dubbed “prison-fits-all.”
The human and financial costs of those trends are staggering. Discrimination in our justice system violates our basic values, as well as our Constitution, and undermines the credibility and effectiveness of law enforcement in communities across the country. Investing in more prison cells instead of drug treatment and mental health services exacts untold suffering from families and neighborhoods, as well as those struggling with addiction or illness. And, ultimately, overreliance on incarceration makes us less safe, because it fails to address underlying problems and typically comes with high recidivism rates.
The financial costs are similarly daunting. Total state spending on corrections last year exceeded $49 billion, up from $12 billion in 1987. By 2011, the bill could grow by an additional $25 billion. Cash-strapped California is the national leader, at $8.8 billion last year.
As the Pew study noted, these are public funds that could go toward improving schools, health care, transportation, or other pressing needs. While spending by the states on higher education increased by 21 percent over the last 20 years, state spending on corrections increased by 127 percent.
Fortunately, both reports included recommended policy reforms that can make our criminal justice system more fair, as well as and more effective. The Pew study pointed to efforts in Texas and Kansas, for example, aimed at reducing recidivism through alternatives to incarceration for people convicted of non-violent crimes. A bipartisan effort in Texas is expanding drug treatment, changing parole practices, and using “drug courts” in which defendants who successfully complete drug treatment can avoid jail time.
After statewide polling showed that most Kansans supported programs to help people on probation succeed and avoid re-incarceration, the Legislature responded by offering grants to community corrections agencies that significantly cut parole and probation revocations; providing guidelines to judges and officers; and tracking and monitoring revocations to measure effectiveness.
The U.N. Committee also made concrete recommendations, based on promising international practices and human rights principles. The Committee called for the passage of legislation outlawing racial profiling at the federal and state levels. It urged adequate funding for public legal aid systems and improvements in the quality of representation provided to low-income defendants. It recommended further study of the causes of racial disparities in the imposition of the death penalty. It sought the discontinuation of life sentences without possibility of parole for people under the age of eighteen. And it recommended that the U.S. “review the definition of racial discrimination used in…federal and state legislation and in court practice, so as to ensure…that it prohibits racial discrimination in all its forms, including practices and legislation that may not be discriminatory in purpose, but in effect.”
These reports are noteworthy precisely because they identify reforms that are working around the country and globe, and that can become part of our national policy. Adapting those approaches to our needs and circumstances should be high on the priority list of a new attorney general.
By Alan Jenkins
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347. The BIG PIGGY - 2008-04-05 08:03:12 |
| I’m with Gen. Sheridan on this one "If I owned hell and Texas, I would live in hell and rent out Texas." |
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346. General K.D. Sheridan - 2008-04-05 07:47:10 |
| Give me hell and sell my land in Texas. I want no parts of that state and it’s rotten criminal justice system |
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345. - 2008-04-05 07:39:43 |
An Open Letter to Craig Watkins
By Jim Schutze
Published; November 16, 2006
An open letter to newly elected Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins;
Dear Mr. Watkins;
Give me a minute. A few minutes at most. What can you lose? First of all, congratulations. Everybody says you’re the first black district attorney in the history of the county. I’m sure it’s true. My only qualification would be that this is a county with a really bad memory for racial things. But we do know you’re the first Democrat in the office since 1986, so you made history last Tuesday. Good on you.
Next, I think I have to tell you that Tuesday may have been the last good day in your life. Hey, I shouldn’t even be telling you this stuff. I should just sit here and let it happen. Let it happen, hell; I will be one of the first to dive in and make it happen, if you let us.
We will pick your bones, man. Use them for toothpicks. And laugh about it. That’s how it ends. Think Terrell Bolton, the crying game. And then we will move on to the next story, because we are in the bone-picking business.
Bolton was our first black police chief. His career and a boatload of hopes and dreams went down in flames three years ago because he couldn’t get his head on straight. And you show every sign of having yours on a little whomperjawed too. So that’s why I’m writing.
What gets to me is that your story could end so differently. You really could usher in a new and better era, not just in the District Attorney’s Office but in the whole community. That culture down there of busting people down to some kind of a rap even when everybody knows they’re innocent; the whole business of refusing to share files with the defense when the law clearly calls for it; getting all haughty and not admitting any mistakes when the District Attorney’s Office is nationally embarrassed by the exoneration of innocent human beings sent to prison for life and death; That’s all a bad legacy from a hick-town, Bible-Belt past when people saw law enforcement as an armed force to keep poor people and minorities cowed and in line.
That could all change. You could change it. You could become a great district attorney.
But Mr. Watkins, nobody thinks that’s what will happen. Especially here in the media. You know what we think you’ll do? Let me run it down for you.
You’ll be paranoid as hell and see enemies behind every tree. You will be defensive and never do anything about your personal business, by which I mean the trouble with the IRS and the unpaid debts, all that stuff.
You will draw down into a little bunker of people you think you can trust. You’ll get more and more crazy about criticism from within your own circle until finally the only people left around you will be the con men, ass-kissers and crooks. One fine day all of your trusted inner circle will see you backing off over a cliff, and not a one of them will warn you. And then you will be gone.
Just gone.
You have to make a huge effort to see that it doesn’t end that way. Please don’t hand me that stuff about how all black middle-class people have your tax and debt problems. It’s not true. And it wouldn’t make any difference if it were true, because not all black middle-class people are the district attorney.
As district attorney you will be held to a higher standard. Don’t bother calling it a double standard. It’s way worse than that. It’s like a triple or quadruple standard. If you walk out in public with a hickey on you, you will be called down. That’s not about you. That’s about every single person who occupies that office, black, white, Latino or, like they say, good, bad or Republican.
And speaking of walking out in public, I wasn’t at your coming-out press conference the day after the election, but I watched clips of it on a Web site. Reporters asked you four times—that I heard—what your plan is for the District Attorney’s Office, and every time you referred them to your Web site. You were sullen and defensive about it. It was obvious you don’t have a plan and don’t have any idea at all what you’re going to do.
Are you kidding me? Do you not think we’re going to rip you apart for that stuff?
Let me point out something that you may or may not know. Half of those Republicans who just got kicked out inherited their jobs from their daddies and uncles. If they hadn’t gone to SMU and been Republican they’d be parking cars for a living right now. The line of white Republican district attorneys who precede you in office does not include any Einsteins. Putting it mildly.
You and your fellow Democrats are coming to this challenge with about the same array of assets and disabilities they had, with one big difference. I suspect most of you have seen life through a somewhat bigger window than the peephole people peek out of from the Park Cities. So that’s a plus. You probably know a lot more about a lot more people. There is every reason you could improve on their record.
But you have to try hard to keep yourself open, to keep smart people around you and to listen to them when they criticize you. You have to figure out that we in the press are not your friends, but we’re not your enemies, either. Don’t give us too much credit. We are fairly simple people. Our job is to hoot and holler and raise a ruckus when the emperor steps out into the street naked. Like you did at your press conference.
I guess it’s all good copy for us if you screw up. We’ll have lots to write about. But that doesn’t mean we want to see it happen. We live here too.
It’s better for everybody if you’re a success. For that, you have to grow a thicker hide just as fast as you can. You have to clean your own house. Do lots more homework. Please don’t mention the Web page again. And finally...
Best of luck. Really. Best of luck to you.
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344. - 2008-04-05 07:37:17 |
March 28, 2008
A prosecutor speaks out
What prosecutors are thinking. Western Justice peers into the mind of a prosecutor. Here are his thoughts about our system of justice.
Yadda, yadda, yadda. Although they won’t admit it to your face, most prosecutors AND defense counsel are saying to themselves [during guilty pleas]; “Who cares about the Constitution? I’ve got places to go, things to see, cases to prepare, let’s move it along here!…..”
He also says “The qualities of a good prosecutor are as elusive and as impossible to define as those which make a good gentleman The qualities of a good prosecutor are as elusive and as impossible to define as those which make a good gentleman.” Tnx APubDef.
Update; He appears to take issue with my either my quotation, or my misunderstanding the purpose of his blog.
Now, I don’t mean to bash him, so please don’t get me wrong. In fact, out of most of the prosecutor (or ex-prosecutor) blogs, his is probably one of the least-self serving. However, most prosecutor blogs or public statements are neither funny nor insightful. Here is why.
Comedy is there to comfort and the afflicted, and afflict the comforted. Prosecutors, even on bad days, are just not afflicted. Even if they are losing every case (as sometimes happens) they are never in the hopeless positions that criminal defendants often find themselves in. Indeed, they can even satisfy themselves that their losses are just an example of “justice prevailing” and the “government always winning” in a criminal matter. Making jokes about criminal practice, which can (and does) ruin peoples’ lives every day just seems smug.
Public mocking by prosecutors is almost always directed at defendants (or their attorneys). In private, however, prosecutors mock cops. Especially cops with less than six years of post-secondary education. They make fun of their educations (or lack thereof) and the way police reports are written. Somehow this humor (no matter how mean-spirited) never makes it into public statements by prosecutors.
Although prosecutors have senses of humor when they share it with the public it usually comes off as mean-spirited. Catalogues of “dumb criminals” or courtroom antics are nothing more than making fun of someone who was too stupid to make an honest living or commit a crime on such a sophisticated level that he wouldn’t get caught. The implication is that the reader (and perhaps any prosecutor) is smarter than these people who can’t even resort to a life of crime properly. When defense lawyers do it, they are bemoaning the “bad facts” that their clients face. I guess it is no surprise that I have never seen a prosecutor subscribe to the belief that every criminal sentence represents a failure of society to educated people in a way that would have prevented such a crime from being committed in the first place.
With few exceptions, most public statements be prosecutors follow the adage that “A simple lie is more true than a complex truth.” To a prosecutor speaking to the public, the law needs to be distilled into some assertion of authority. So, when, for example, asked about the law of “locker searches” in high schools, a prosecutor will say something along the lines of “I am a lawyer, and I know that kids can be searched.” While there is some nuance in that statement, there is no way in hell that a prosecutor would ever explain the contours of a high school student’s Fourth Amendment rights with any detail.
Prosecutors generally don’t want to discuss weaknesses in their positions. So they don’t. (On the other hand, a defense lawyer’s “position” usually becomes moot after a trial, so they are free to acknowledge that a given position was “week.”)
Despite all this, there are actually a lot of ethical, fair, and intelligent prosecutors out there. The problem is that when they say when they get an audience.
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343. - 2008-04-05 05:59:01 |
Thanks for this bit of information. I will make certian I NEVER EVER come to TEXAS for any reason, especially Dallas, Texas.
A Black Man |
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342. Herman Potts - 2008-04-04 00:31:35 |
This is very good for Texas and the Dallas area, keep it up Kay Lee.
"Herm" |
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341. Herman Potts - 2008-04-04 00:31:35 |
This is very good for Texas and the Dallas area, keep it up Kay Lee.
"Herm" |
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