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Originally Posted by Dragonlich
That's where the US differs from Europe, I presume. We have MANY right-wing politicians talking about the right of safety, as opposed to the rights of criminals to privacy, for one thing.
I would assume that the Bush administration is holding these terrorists to make Americans safer. So that'd lead to the "right of safety" thing.
It was an example of how things can go wrong in the judicial system. Fact is, there instances where "obviously" guilty people go free because of their fame/money/connections, or simply because their lawyers are very, very good. There are also many examples of cases where people get convicted, and later proven innocent.
I have given examples of terror-trials in the Netherlands, and how they have failed to get a conviction, because there is so little firm evidence. After all, these terrorists usually haven't actually blown people up yet. All you can do is try and prove they were planning to do nasty things, something made very difficult by the nature of terrorism and terrorists. The evidence usually consists of extremists tapes and videos (free speech) and plans/photographs of supposed targets ("planning or been on a holiday"). As for witnesses... usually terrorists don't rat on their friends, and even if they do, they're known terrorists, trying to frame an innocent man - not very difficult to dismiss. In a non-jury trial, it is *very* difficult to convict people on the basis of that evidence.
Perhaps it's possible to give these people trials by jury, because that'd undoubtedly lead to a high proportion of convictions. But then again... the results would be mostly emotional, and we know how that works. The terrorists won't be getting a fair trial, they'll be assumed guilty from the start. Hey, but at least they'll have had a trial; it'll be okay to lock them up for life then, eh? So what if it later turns out that a lot of them were indeed innocent...
But go ahead, prove me wrong. Show me the errors. I'm always willing to learn, and if you have some insight into why terror trials would be both fair and would lead to convictions based on hardly any evidence... be my guest.
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I'm not trying to prove you wrong in the sense you seem to be implying here.
What I am replying to is your apparent attitude toward accused persons. First of all, you have decided a priori that these people, along with other criminally accuses apparently, that they are guilty of
something; but that it's now up to the courts to obtain the verdict in the most expedient manner. I don't feel the need to demonstrate to you that trials ought to be fair, lead to convictions, and be based on hardly any evidence. All three of those are your prerequisites for a suitable trial to obtain the verdict you have already decided upon. A fair trial in that schema would be a verdict of guilty.
The correct response, according to our legal system (and that is, after all, what we are discussing in the thread), would be that a fair trial could not be conducted based on "hardly any evidence." We ought to be discussing how someone could even be detained at all, much less
for life with "hardly any evidence."
How did you determine accused terrorists were "obviously" guilty, yet went free, without attending their trials and combing through the evidence? My comment about such a crude method of analysis was based on the presumption that you gathered your information about OJ Simpson from the media. Perhaps I was wrong--did you attend the trial?
There are perhaps hundreds of cases of people who have been able to establish their innocence after a guilty verdict. Relatively few cases occur where the person's guilt is in question, yet the person is let free. All of this occurs while millions of accused are channeled through the criminal justice system in this country
per day. But according to the way our system is set up, there has never been a case where a guilty person was judged to be "not guilty" and set free. The judge or jury decides and, regardless of what opinions bystanders might form from the media portrayals and their own ideology, "guilty" is a legal state--not a moral or objective one.
There are no provisions to curtail one's rights in regards to the offense one is accused of. If that were the case, then we would have set up different rights provisions for shoplifters as distinct from murderers. You have no grounds to suggest that the damage from a crime constitutes the level of legal protections an accused ought to have, other than your opinion. And in this particular instance, your opinion runs counter to both historical proceedure and what's best for society.
I claim it's opposed to what's best for society because your argument hinges on a few implicit arguments. One of them, the presumption of guilt (instead of the stateside demand for presumption of innocence) a priori, seems to be based on your notion that legal protections are established to protect the guilty. They aren't--they are established to protect the innocent. They aren't established to protect the criminals, as they often are portrayed, but the accused. The subtle shift in public rhetoric about how the accused are presumed to be guilty that has led to this faulty concept. It's a dangerous concept. Once public acceptance of a priori guilt is established, and that seems to be at least part of the result of the rights of victims discourse, then things like we are discussing here logically follow.
The only check we would have against abuse of such a system would depend on a well publicized case in the media. Finding cases where abuses occurred would only be possible if those cases became public. A more prudent and historical approach is to hold the state to show its people that limits exist to its power; not that they must show the state to have abused its power.
I think your concept of jury systems is backwards, but I have no idea how much exposure you have to them or what they are like in the States even. From your statements, I would guess none. A jury conviction would be
more difficult to obtain, not less. Faux commentary aside, juries take their deliberations very seriously. And instead of only one person deciding, depending on the type of law and state a trial is in, the numbers needed for a conviction range from 10 to all 12 members deciding a person's guilt.
I think that using a single example from millions per day, especially when less than 10% of all criminal cases even go to trial, isn't a very sound method to determine whether flaws exist in the system. There are better methods that depend less on hyperbole and mentally charged imagery, which I would prefer.