The criminal justice system is not fair. If you expect fair, don't get mixed up with it. Stuff like this goes on all the time.
Police find drugs in a house. They tell the man of the house if he doesn't confess to the drugs, they will jail him and his wife and see to it that his children wind up in a children's home somewhere.
Prosecutors have a case to file against a defendnant who is currently serving time in state prison. They wait until a week before he is due to be released and then file the case, so he will have to serve back to back sentences - the one he just finished and the one on the newly filed case.
A state supreme court rules that whenever anyone is convictred of any crime and is put on probation, it is legal to include a search and seizure provision in the terms of probation requiring the probationer to submit to search and seizure at any time of the day or night, with or without probable cause, overtuning decades of law which had previously held that a search waiver condition of probation is not legal unless it bears some rational relationship to the crime committed.
Police promise a suspect that they will release him if he confesses. He confesses. They don't release him.
Detectives tell a defendant that if he will turn snitch, the charges against him will be dismissed. The defendant, at great personal risk, turns in half a dozen drug dealers, only to have the police turn their backs on him when they have all the information they think they are going to be able to get out of him.
Police pull a car over for no reason, order the occupant out, search the car and the person of the occupant, find contraband, make an arrest and then write a report which says they pulled the car over because of a defective tail light, failure to signal a turn, etc.
This kind of stuff happens all the time. Of course, it never happens to the "good guys," so the "good guys" not only don't care - they ENDORSE it.
Happened (past tense)? I assure you, it happens on a daily basis. The system works effectively most of the time - "honestly" depends on your perspective. Of course there are bad lawyers, bad cops, bad judges, bad dentists and bad acupuncturists (not really sure there are any
good acupuncturists - but I digress). That's not the point. This kind of stuff happens all the time for a reason.
The reason is complicated - it involves a combination of an "end justifies the means" attitude on the part of the police, combined with a judicial tolerance for what is going on occasioned by a good, healthy dose of self interest on the part of the judiciary. You see, every six years or so, judges have to run for re-election. They correctly sense that the general mood of the public these days is a "get tough on crime" attitude - a "hang 'em high" mentality, if you will.
Judges know that if they don't do just about everything the prosecutors want, come next election, they might have someone (usually a disgruntled prosecutor) running against them and claiming they are "soft on crime." That's the LAST thing any judge wants. Hence, they bend over backwards to make sure the prosecutor gets what he/she wants and I can assure you that isn't a system that gives defendants a break.
Have you actually worked in a criminal court? If so, I don't think you would be saying what you are saying here. Criminals were getting released on "technicalities" with regularity back in the 60's and early 70's because the decisions of the Warren court were still in effect. Since the mid-70's, however, more conservative judges have been chipping away at the Warren court decisions. Miranda has been so watered down, it is almost impossible to recognize it today.
The pendulum has swung the other way from the 60's when it comes to criminal justice, believe me. The combination of prosecution minded judges plus appellate decision which effectively shift things in favor of the prosecution and away from the defense, has pretty much guaranteed a huge advantage for the prosecution these days.
Well, this is obviously a subjective judgment which depends largely on one's personal point of view about the criminal justice system. I will give you this much: I think that, in many cases, the sentences imposed are not harsh enough - which supports your feeling about victims not being properly taken care of by the system. When it comes to convictions, however, believe me, the system sticks it to the defendants, hands down.
One thing is for sure, it is no deterrant to crime for people to look the other way and condone or accept or justify some of the worst that humans can do to other humans.
I totally agree.
