6th June 1998
Column 17
I've finally gotten some ribbons for my typewriters, so I am able to write a bit more. I want to talk about the legal system again, but it isn't an easy topic to talk about because of all the intangibles that come into play. In deciding on how to talk about it, I figured instead of saying, 'You get arrested, you get a lawyer assigned to your case etc.' I thought that I would instead talk about things I have seen and various anecdotes related to the legal system. Hopefully you will be able to make sense out of what I write, even if it seems to bounce around a bit, but it is the best way I think there is to talk about such a complicated process.
The legal system isn't only about picking a jury and having a
trial. Instead, it is the culmination of many things that have to
happen during the process that leads up to the trial. Most people
seem to have the attitude, 'if you had a trial by Jury, you've
had a fair trial'. In theory that sounds good, but the
reality is much different. If you don't have the resources to
defend yourself, to hire a Private Investigator, to hire experts
in the various forensic sciences and you don't have the funds to
pay for even the most basic things needed to prepare a defense,
while on the other side, the Prosecutors have unlimited public
funds and the use of other unlimited resources to be used against
you. I have even heard of the prosecution paying a 'retainer'
to various experts in the forensic sciences, not so the
prosecution could use these experts for their case, but in order
to keep the defense from being able to use these experts during a
trial. I know that people don't care about these sorts of things.
After all, if a person who is charged with a crime goes to trial
and is found innocent, the media starts ranting and raving about
how that happened. Too bad they don't rant and rave as hard about
how slanted the legal system is for conviction, regardless of
guilt or innocence. It would be nice if a 'Fair Trial' was
only about picking a Jury and letting them decide the outcome,
but it doesn't work like that. It all comes down to economics and
how much you have to pay for your defense.
I was wryly amused by a letter I received some time age (from
someone in another country) and they talked about how sad it was
that in America, which is supposed to be the 'Land Of the Free',
the defendant has to prove they are innocent. (This person was
talking about seeing a story of a person in the USA, that had
been arrested for something and our media already had the person
convicted, or so he thought, from the story he had seen). He went
on about how much superior their legal system was in his country,
because a person was presumed to be innocent until the Government
proved otherwise. I spent a bit of time trying to explain to him
that in theory, our system was supposed to be the same way, but
the reality of it is that the innocent have to prove they are
innocent. I found it ironic that somebody from another country
would be talking about how much better their legal system was
because they had the presumption of innocence, when one of the
foundations of our legal system is suppose to be the presumption
of innocence and other countries had followed suit, in time.
Americans have become so brainwashed, they automatically assume
that if a person is arrested, they are guilty unless they prove
otherwise. A good example of this is the guy that was accused of
the Bombing in Atlanta, during the Olympics. The media had
basically convicted this guy (I think his name is Jewel) and I
can guarantee you, if he hadn't been fortunate enough to be able
to prove his innocence before he went to trial, he would be
sitting in prison for the rest of his life, right now.
The reason that economics plays such a big part in being able
to defend yourself is the prosecutor (as I said before) has
unlimited resources available to them. They have hundreds of
Detectives and Investigators, they have access to any scientific
laboratory they want, they have a staff of attorneys to work on
cases, they have unlimited money to pay for any legal experts
that they want. The list goes on and on, but I'm sure you get the
idea. On the other hand, the defendant has a court appointed
Lawyer who probably already has a number of other cases to work
on. The attorney has to go to the court to get any money at all,
to pay for an Investigator, to pay for any scientific work that
may need to be done to check the evidence that the prosecution
puts up. The Judge has the option of granting, or not granting
any money to the defense. So when your defense lawyer spends a
good deal of their energy just to get the money to do their job,
then that is time taken away from when they could he working on
your defense, or on the defense of one of their other cases.
The thing about a court appointed lawyer is you never know if
they are good, or no good, until it is too late to do anything
about it. Unless you personally have knowledge of the way the
legal system works. There is one notorious attorney who has 7
former clients sitting here on Death Row. After the seventh time,
even the courts were embarrassed enough to finally stop giving
this attorney clients. Not for the fact that he has 7 former
clients on Death Row, but for the fact that he was so obviously
incompetent, that the court couldn't get away with assigning
anymore death cases to this lawyer. He had an average of one week
in which he picked a Jury, the Prosecution put on their case and
the defendant was convicted with any defense on their behalf.
Now, one week to go from picking a Jury to a conviction and
getting a death verdict, (those of you who have been paying
attention, you remember that this means two separate
trials in a week) when in even the more minor cases, it is not
unusual to have a trial that last a couple of weeks, and that is
for a minor offense. The Prosecutors use a lot of tricks to try
and screw up the defense as well. One prosecutor had a reputation
for arresting defense witnesses as soon as they came out
of the courtroom, when they had finished testifying for the
defense. This Prosecutor would make sure that the other defense
witnesses saw the arrests. After two or three arrests, the rest
of the defense witnesses would leave the courtroom and refuse to
testify for the defense. Eventually the California Supreme Court
reprimanded this prosecutor. The Prosecutor was proud of that and
would brag and joke about it. The sad part about it is that this
guy was promoted in the Prosecutors office, to supervise and
train new Prosecutors.
Later,
Dean