Our criminal justice system is the worst in the world

Our criminal justice system is the worst in the world. America has only 4.4% of the world population and 22% of the world prison population. We have the worst system in the world because you stand very little chance of ever getting a fair trial. The time it takes to even overturn wrongful convictions is outrageous. Prosecutors are cold-blooded. They will never admit to a mistake because that impacts their ability to get a big paying job. Judges have crafted so many rules intended to prevent review of cases because they too do not wish to expose the corrupt criminal justice system. We have a 93% conviction rate nationally. (My addition - Nazi Germany only had a 90% conviction rate) The government cannot ever achieve that level of success in anything else.

Now a 76-year-old man who the government has finally conceded was wrongly convicted in the 1957 of killing of an Illinois schoolgirl who was 7 years old, was finally released Friday after a judge vacated his conviction. The real killer remains free. Jack McCullough was sentenced to life in prison and is one of the oldest cold cases to be tried in U.S. history. In a review of documents last year, it was found that the evidence which supported his long-held alibi that he had been 40 miles away in Rockford at the time of Maria’s disappearance was correct.

The only possible way to clean up the Justice system is (1) any prosecutor who wrongly convicts a person should serve the sentence he demanded; (2) prosecutors may never run for office or become a judge; and (3) prosecutors cannot take a job with any law firm for 5 years after leaving his position. DO this, and we will see Justice return.

Link to Article

 

I would say our conviction rate makes us the best in the world. When people commit a crime they get prosecuted and sent to prison.

How is that not effective?

Sure there are wrongly convicted people but that is rare. Would you prefer we do not punish people who commit crimes?

If you do not like the laws we have a system in place to change them but you shouldn't blame the justice system for being effective.

 

I’m not saying the US justice system is perfect – far from it – but “worst in the world” is either ridiculous rhetoric or a demonstration of gross ignorance of life beyond your borders.

 

You don't know what you're talking about. There are thousands of innocent people locked up in our prison system. Watch this documentary for starters - After Innocence. As the article states, prosecutors will never admit to a mistake because that impacts their ability to advance and get a big paying job.

I would prefer the government focus on actual crimes - those who initiate force, fraud or some type of coercion. And then I would prefer that the average sentence for murder be longer than 10 years. Murder should be automatic life. The court system will jail people in selective prosecution cases for non-violent crimes and will then go lenient on violent criminals and release repeat offenders. Again, that is not justice.

LMAO. Damn, a total apologist for the state. You clearly have never been inside the court system. Get Congress - a group bought and paid for by special interests to pass better laws? You're delusional.

Question - Was Obamacare constitutional? Did the court system administer "justice" by upholding it?

 

As far as a total actuality, I agree with you. North Korea an obvious example of a worse system. However, they really don't even pretend that it's justice. The reason our system really is the worst is because they pretend that our system equates to a shining beam coming down from heaven representing God's justice. What makes ours worse is that illusion, because the actuality is that it's a very corrupt system and prosecutors do not answer at all for the thousands of innocent people that they've locked up in the prison systems in this country.

No one in North Korea aside from maybe Kim Jung Un's inner circle actually think they have any semblance of a justice system in North Korea. But here most people still falsely believe that our system is just.

 

Sure, try China and their black prisons. Go to North Korea.

 

See my response above. Again, there is no illusion of justice there. No one else in the world believes those places actually offer justice. The U.S. pretends that it does though.

 

The criminal justice system is greatly at odds with the Bill of Rights.

Right to post bond? Not if you're poor. Right to a speedy trial? Doesn't exist.

Just those 2 force most people to plea guilty as they'll get out of jail quicker that way than if they stay in jail waiting for trial and found not guilty.

There is essentially no sanctions against prosecutors who hide evidence or any action taken against prosecution witnesses caught lying.100 times as much is spend on prosecution than public defenders.

 

It has been said "The more laws, the less justice"

Well, maybe it's "The more money"

The United States is a wealthy country with a Third-World population.

 

Missing from this list of problems are two more….

1. The United States imprisons more people than any other country in the world, including China that has a billion more people than we do, in raw numbers, not percentage of the population. One out of every 100 adults in America is in jail… 2.3 Million people. China has about 1.5 Million people in jail.

2. Our prison system is operated as "for profit" by private business interests and impacts the economy of the location it is in. A decline in prisoners equals a decline in the local economy that supports the prison. Jobs for nurses, drivers, guards, and local motels and food establishments that cater to prison visitors, plus the construction jobs in building the prison make having a prison in rural communities an economic boon. Lowering the number of prisoners lowers the demand for goods and services, so there is little call to reduce the number of inmates, especially non-violent felons, through legal reforms.

 

The problem in that regard is with the monetary system and the currency. By removing gold and silver from our currency, this more than anything else allowed the concentration of wealth to the highest levels of government and the banking sector.

 

Excellent point. A couple of judges have been convicted for taking kickbacks for incarcerations. And that's another case of absolute proof that there are thousands of innocent people being locked away, because thousands were released as a result of that investigation. But of course the for profit system itself is really a scam. And I fully believe there are other judges who never got caught because they simply covered their tracks better.

 

Our criminal justice system is one of the worst in the world, but not for the reason you mentioned. We have a retarded system because we don't do anything to address the underlying problems, and we actually increase the factors that lead to a life of crime. The tracking of criminals is one of the worst things we do, in my opinion. Punish someone and get it over with or keep them locked up forever. Preventing people with criminal pasts from getting good jobs might be the dumbest thing I have ever seen.

We are definitely extremely incompetent in this regard, just like many other areas.

 

Uuum, I'd say Mexico has us beat hands down. How many police officers harass tourists for bribes here? In college me and my friends were threatened twice by those who are supposed to protect us from the drug lords. These guys were working for them. Its normal practice down there.

 

It really depends on how you define justice. Even in the PRC, there is justice there and the people, its citizens, believe in their form of justice just as French believe in their form of justice.

You are allowed a trial. You are presumed innocent until you are proven guilty. there is an appeals process if you believe that the conviction, the procedures, the evidence, etc was used misused, not allowed to be seen by the defense, etc. And it is evident that the system worked when he was released from prison after the evidence was presented. Maybe it should not have taken this long, but the system is not built on speed.

 

You are sick in the head. You're honestly going to claim that a man being wrongly convicted of murder, appeals process failing, losing 59 years of his life including his youth and the best years of his life, and no one who did this to him faces any punishment whatsoever, is evidence that our justice system works???????? Again, you are sick in the head, man, if you believe that. You need to be checked for Stockholm Syndrome. You would have made a great expert witness for the Stasi or the SS.

 

You have to look at what was the evidence 59 years ago and what the evidence is today. Today, we have DNA tests that can either exonerate or convict a person of a crime. y guess is that he was convicted based on circumstantial evidence at the time of the trial and was eventually exonerated by DNA testing today. Again, the system worked for its intended purpose and that he was given a trial, had adequate legal representation, was tried by a jury of his peers, etc. that is fair even though the result was a wrongful conviction.

 

You must be an attorney. That would explain your mental sickness. What would be fair is for the prosecutors, if any are still alive, or if not their children, to then go to jail for 59 years. Then maybe they wouldn't try to destroy people's lives over some flimsy circumstantial evidence.

It's a mental sickness to believe that someone has to go to jail every time a prosecutor demands that they do so. If you don't have concrete evidence, then you don't have concrete evidence. Case closed. Again, prosecutors have placed thousands of innocent people in prison in this country.

 

(smacks head) a dramatic swing from one extreme end to the other extreme end...

you realize if prosecutors could not take any legal job after leaving their position, for a 5 year period, you would NEVER get anyone to take a prosecutors job, or the people who do take that job, would by the end be so bitter and hateful they would either never prosecute people or be quite vindictive and aggressively pursue and bury people...

and this notion they should face the sentence if they make a mistake, means they will likely let murders go free, because they dare not risk a jury or judge making a mistake that they ultimately pay for... you have some of the worst thoughts on this entire subject that would cause more problems than you would be solving...

the current justice system has immense leeway and often criminals receive LESS sentence than they were facing for the crime they got arrested for... most prosecutors never take cases to trial... in fact by some counts almost 95% of all cases are pleaded down to a lesser charge and sentence... I would say that makes our legal system FAR too forgiving and easy on the criminals... especially with the number of cases where a judge will stay the sentence and they serve no time in jail or prison... INSANE...

the notion we need to solve 1% of the problem by jeopardizing the other 99% is just an asinine thought... stop looking at everything like its a nail... stop being a hammer...

P.S. you realize we've already addressed and solved many of the "mistakes" made in the past, using new procedures and methods, not just in prosecuting, but how we handle police lineups, eyewitness accounts, interviews with detectives, etc etc etc... if you really want to make an impact in the system today, you could find ways to encourage more people to become public defenders, instead of first year law students being thrust into these positions with little to no experience, while they face off against veteran lawyers... find a way to provide investigative resources to that public defender who is often overloaded on cases they miss court times while running between rooms any given day, get them the resources they need, like the private very expensive $1000 an hour law firms provide wealthy clients... putting up better lawyers for defendants will solve far more issues than you'll create with your insane logic and solutions...

P.S.S. to touch on judges, we should make it a law that no judicial race can run uncontested, or else that judge will be removed from the bench... thats kind of silly and extreme, but we need to do SOMETHING to the current system where judges never run opposed (because they will punish the lawyers and law firms they work for if they run against them, common practice, ask a lawyer why they wouldn't run against a sitting judge sometime)... something needs to be changed there...

 

I can probably give you a number of criminal defense attorneys who think like I do and state that the US system is fair. You are obfuscating two separate issues here. First is the issue of fairness. For our system to be fair, there has to be probable cause for an arrest warrant to be issue and probable cause for an indictment to be handed down by the grand jury. You then have ample time to have a legal representative to represent you during the entire course of proceedings even if you are not able to afford one. The problem lies with the preponderance of the evidence at the time of trial, not what technology can be developed several decades from now.

Most defense attorneys want adequate defense representation and are great advocates for it. some who were judges on benches have become great criminal defense attorneys. Some prosecutors have become great jurists on the bench trying to be as fair as possible.

 

A failure is that scumbag Affluenza subhuman, murdering 4 people and ruining another's life, then RUNS, and will end up getting less than 2 years in rich boy prison. Now THAT's a travesty if there ever was one. The judges should be hung for letting this kid get off like that. He still won't have to work a day in his life, but thats if he plays his cards right. KARMA is going to get that SOB. The problem is before Karma gets him, he might kill another car load of people before he's done.

And some poor schmuck deals some weed and gets a few years...compared to THAT?

 

I agree. But the prison stats and execution stats are alarming...as are the conviction rates

And privately run prisons are a disaster

 

You also sound like an attorney or a candidate for Stockholm Syndrome in much of what you say.

Plenty of them are already bitter and hateful. They all need psych exams because I think we have a lot of sociopaths in those positions.

No, it just means that they must have concrete evidence to put murderers away. Violent crime has been going down. If you want to make it go down further, then increase gun ownership among the populace and make murder a mandatory life sentence with no parole. The answer is not to let prosecutors run all over innocent people.

Yes, which is just another facet of the corruption. But that doesn't change the fact that thousands of innocent people are being put in prison.

So you claim, prove it's only "1% of the problem." I just provided a link earlier proving thousands of innocent people were sent to prison. I don't think you're willing to admit the full extent of the problem. Also, if we flip the issue and say that locking up 1% of political activists is no big deal, that's b.s. That virtually locks in the corruption. It's like Irwin Schiff. He tries to raise constitutional issues and the judge tells him not to mention the Constitution anymore or he's in contempt. Look, it's not his fault that the Congress passes a bunch of nonsensical laws that contradict the Constitution and that the crooks in the Supreme Court then uphold with bull(*)(*)(*)(*) "reasoning." The man died a political prisoner without being able to raise the defense of the supreme law of the land. That's corruption.

Again, this apologist behavior is what's insane. You look at a corrupt system where thousands of innocent people are going to prison and losing decades of their lives, priceless time, and you say "Oh look at all the improvements we've made." Give me a break.

Elections?????? How about impeachment. How about giving the public the ability to call for an impeachment vote. The problem with the Constitution is that they never assumed things would get this corrupt. We need more protections against the government, and clearly worded so that the establishment judges can't interpret them to mean that the people have no power, which is what they will do if they can get away with it.

 

Our criminal justice system is terrible, but I'd argue it's still better than Russia's or China's.

 

Appeal to the Majority fallacy. Proves nothing.

You're the one obfuscating. This man lost almost 60 years of his life. Two questions - Should anyone in the government face criminal punishment for what they did to him? Does his lost time have any value?

Your opinions don't prove anything. And we still have a corrupt system.