The American Criminal Justice System is Dead

by Humphrey

A profoundly troubling study published by the University of Texas School of Law concludes that the American criminal justice system is dead in everything but name. The paper, entitled ?Waiving the Criminal Justice System,? describes how the adversarial process through which the state must prove the guilt of a defendant has been supplanted with a system of administrative law in which prosecutors extract plea bargains in exchange for relatively lenient sentences. This is why federal prosecutors win more than ninety percent of their cases through plea bargains, rather than jury trials.

This is a lamentable state of affairs, and to many observers a familiar story. This study, however, breaks new ground by showing that prosecutors at both the state and federal levels require defendants to waive?? due process rights that are vital for post-conviction appeals ? such as the right to effective assistance of counsel, and the right to obtain exculpatory evidence that can be used to overturn a conviction or at least obtain a new trial.

In the American tradition, the purpose of a trial was to establish the truth of an accusation against a defendant who is presumed to be innocent. The purpose of our post-constitutional criminal system is to ratify the defendant's guilt, irrespective of the facts.

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in exchange for relatively lenient sentences.?

They often have little evidence of a minor BS "crime" so they threaten to add "conspiracy" money laundering, terrorism, and other BS and threaten 30 years, unless they plead guilty and serve two years It an extortion business.

Agree they trump up the charges and add two or three extra charges and there you are facing 20 years in jail if the jury goes against you. Out of fear you accept the maximum sentence for the minor charge that they offer you a plea bargain on. You end up with the maximum sentence for a minor crime. The whole system is been on a decline for the last 100 years now it is finally dead. Now we have disorderly police who arrest people for made up offenses like a parent speaking out against a school for giving a child sexually explicit material in a English class.

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Americans Can Be Executed Without Charges -- But Criminal Banks Can't Be Prosecuted

Will Grigg

On the same day that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was filibustering the nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA over the nominee?s involvement in lethal drone strikes, Attorney General Eric Holder defended arbitrary power before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

As we noted earlier, Holder told the Committee that any Congressional action to restrict the targeted killing program would represent an unconstitutional limitation of presidential powers.

?In the same hearing, Holder said that some corrupt banks are simply too big to prosecute. According to Holder, ?some of these institutions become so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that ? if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. And I do think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large.?

In brief: According to Holder, American citizens can be summarily executed without criminal charges, but criminal banks are immune to prosecution.

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yes they have a creed.and it is all greed,this administration has done a remake of a very good film called paint your wagon.of course they screwed it up or not,but changed the name to paint your out-house. Sounds like the banks in the UK - The taxpayers have bailed these crimminal bakners out - now they are awarding themselves multi million ? in bonuses - Banking appears to be the only industry where failiure is rewarded - any other industry you would be out of a job and probably in prison.

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Jeremy Scahill Points Out Drone-Bomba-Obama Is A Mass Murdering Criminal, MSNBC Panel Dumbstruck

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Presumed Guilty in Florida: Drug "Crimes" with no Criminal Intent

by William Grigg

Thanks to a state Supreme Court ruling effectively disposing of the need for prosecutors to prove criminal intent, the Florida state government can continue imprisoning people for possessing substances they didn't know were illegal.

Florida is one of two states afflicted with drug possession statutes that don't require the government to prove criminal intent. The statute permits defendants to offer an affirmative defense of "unwitting possession" -- which means that the defendant, not the state, has the burden of proof. ?The state Supreme Court, ruling the recent case of Florida v. Adkins, has rejected a challenge to that statute filed on behalf of dozens of defendants awaiting trial on drug possession charges.

"There is no constitutional right to possess contraband," insisted Justice Charles Canady in the majority opinion. "Nor is there a protected right to be ignorant of the nature of the property in one's possession."

Like most rulings of this kind, Canady's opinion begins with the totalitarian premise that the powers exercised by government are presumptively constitutional -- and that it is the actions of the individual that must be justified. This inverts the American perspective on law, in which government can exercise only those powers explicitly delegated to it in the applicable constitution (state or federal).

Since the repeal of the 18th Amendment, there has been no constitutional provision authorizing the federal government to regulate the possession or consumption of mood-altering substances. The Florida state constitution is similarly devoid of such provisions. Thus there is no constitutional authority for Florida officials to prosecute people for possession of such substances.

Even if the Florida state government had the authority to criminalize drug possession, the statute dealt with in this ruling would be illegitimate because it doesn't require the state to prove the existence of mens rea -- malicious intent on the part of the accused.

In order for an act to be a crime, it must involve the deliberate violation of a clear and intelligible statute by an act that inflicts injury to another person. Individual drug consumption -- although unwise -- doesn't injure anybody else; as a victimless act, it cannot be construed as a crime. The same is true of mere possession of narcotics, which -- as the Florida statute acknowledges -- doesn't even necessarily involve criminal intent.

Under the Florida v. Adkins ruling, however, people can be convicted of a supposed crime on the basis of mere physical proximity to contraband they didn't know was on their property or among their personal effects.

In his dissent, Justice James E.C. Perry points out that the standard embraced by the court would permit the prosecution and imprisonment of "a letter carrier who delivers a package containing unprescribed Adderall; a roommate who is unaware that the person who shares his apartment has hidden illegal drugs in the common areas of the home; a mother who carries a prescription pill bottle in her purse, unaware that the pills have been substituted for illegally obtained drugs by her teenage daughter, who placed them in the bottle to avoid detection ... a driver who rents a car in which a past passenger accidentally dropped a baggie of marijuana under the seat; a traveler who mistakenly retrieves from a luggage carousel a bag identical to her own containing Oxycodone; a helpful college student who drives a carload of a friend's possessions to the friend's new apartment, unaware that a stash of heroin is tucked within those possessions; [or] an ex-wife who is framed by an ex-husband who planted cocaine in her home in an effort to get the upper hand in a bitter custody dispute."

The majority opinion blithely dismissed these possibilities -- at least some of which have been validated through actual court experience -- by insisting that the statute's "affirmative defense" provision addresses the rights of the defendant. As Justice Perry observes, this violates common law principles ? traceable to ancient Roman law ? by forcing the defendant to overcome a presumption of guilt:

"Under the majority's decision "? the innocent will from the start be presumed guilty. The innocent will be deprived of their right to simply deny the charges and hold the State to its burden of proving them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The innocent will instead be forced to assert an affirmative defense, whereupon the possession of a controlled substance, whether actual or constructive, shall give rise to a permissive presumption that the possessor knew of the illicit nature of the substance... The innocent will then have no realistic choice but to shoulder the burden of proof and present evidence to overcome that presumption"?. The innocent will then hear their jury instructed on the permissive presumption that they knew of the illicit nature of the substance in question."

The statute upheld in the Adkins ruling is involved in roughly one third of all felony charges in Palm Beach County. Peter Antonacci, State Attorney for Palm Beach County, expressed relief over the ruling. "It would have been a substantial mess if had gone the other way," he told the Palm Beach Post, in apparent ignorance of his implicit admission that his office is responsible for imprisoning a great number of people who had done nothing to harm anybody else.

Read the Adkins ruling here.

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there is no right to control what a man eats.

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People Realizing New Anti-Streaming Criminal Copyright Bill Could Mean Jail Time For Lip Synchers

by Mike Masnick, Techdirt

We recently wrote about the horrible bill introduced by Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons to extend criminal copyright law to include "public performances" as being potentially criminal. As we explained at the time, current copyright law is split into civil and criminal parts, with most violations being civil in nature. But this new bill -- unfortunately recommended by White House Copyright Czar Victoria Espinel -- would extend the criminal provisions to include "public performances." Supporters claim that the lack of a "public performances" provision in criminal copyright law was a "loophole" or an oversight. But that's incorrect. There are good reasons why public performances aren't covered by criminal copyright law, in that it rarely makes sense to consider them criminal issues.

Yet, because the entertainment industry is freaking out about sites that embed and stream infringing content, and want law enforcement to put people in jail over it, rather than filing civil lawsuits, this move was made to extend criminal copyright law. However, the idea and the suggestion were done with very little thought towards what this really means in an internet age, when almost everything you do online could be considered "a public performance." We already pointed to one possibility: that people embedding YouTube videos could face five years in jail. Now, others are pointing out that it could also put kids who lip sync to popular songs, and post the resulting videos on YouTube, in jail as well.

Now, of course, all of the supporters of this bill insist that's just crazy talk. After all, this bill is not intended for that purpose at all. It's solely intended to go after "criminals" who are doing these things for profit:

The new law will not target ?individuals or families streaming movies at home,? said a statement from Klobuchar. She said the bill will instead target ?criminals that are intentionally streaming thousands of dollars in stolen digital content and profiting from it.?

That's nice to say, and I'm sure she means it. But this shows a massive misunderstanding of how the internet works. After all, plenty of people doing these kinds of videos may put some ads around them, and plenty of them get to be really, really big. And, as we've seen with ICE's domain seizures, they consider any use of advertising, even if it makes a pittance, to be "profiting from infringement." These days, everything has ads on it, and it's easy for anyone to sign up for a simple ad account and make a few bucks here and there for your activities online.

And that's the problem. While I'm sure no one supporting this bill thinks it'll be used in this manner, and I'm sure law enforcement has no interest or intention to go after lip-syncing teens, we've all seen how laws like this get stretched and used to bring people up on charges, when no other law applies. Remember the Lori Drew case? That involved the feds stretching a "computer hacking" law to claim she "hacked" MySpace by creating a fake account on the service, allowing them to charge her with a felony. Similarly, we've seen officials charge people with wiretapping for merely wearing a helmet cam while riding a motorcycle.

The point is that when law enforcement wants to charge someone with a felony where there's no obvious match, they'll often stretch laws like this to find something they can use. And this extension of criminal copyright law to include a "public performance" seems ripe for misuse. If Klobuchar and the others are serious about this, they should go back to the drawing board and rewrite the bill so it's not nearly so broad and won't open up so many potential unintended consequences.

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The new Tenn. anti-terrorism bill has a smiler problem. The bill is worded so PC, it can be used against any group they want, Teapartiers, Ron Paul supporters, anyone who disagrees with official policy. It amazes me how quickly they give up liberty for (false) security. The power you give to those you like in government, can also be used by those you fear in government. If your child is a teapartier (called terrorist by HS), feeding them could land you in jail. Donating to Ron Paul, the Libertarian party, Pro life, (just using Homeland Security watch list), Anti-war, NRA, etc, could make you a criminal. Freedom is asleep in Tenn.

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"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill

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