I get the presumption of innocence.
If by any chance I got arrested for something, I would arrange for high quality representation, with money for investigators and experts. I don't think I would get equal justice. I would get very good justice, with access to bail and with all my rights and privileges protected. Everyone is supposed to get the presumption of innocence and access to justice. Lots of people do not.
It isn't fair. It isn't equal justice. But it is how the system works.
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| Hilliard |
Hilliard wrote:
Whether Donald Trump ever pays for any of his many crimes, the damage has been done. As a Black mother I cannot unsee the fact that our “democratic” society metes out the same quality of justice as what one might expect from a Somali warlord. Lack of power and money are what determine guilt. We just hide it beneath infinitely more layers of protocol than do the Somalis.
Given all the brilliant minds that engage with matters of justice, why can’t our legal system rise above the habit of merely preying on and stuffing our prisons full of the poor and powerless? Those former prisoners from time to time includes some of my Black male students. Do our top law schools and brilliant legal minds devote any time at all to correcting the imbalance? After all, wouldn’t most human beings define justice as meting out the most punishment to those individuals whose wrongdoing crushes the lives of the most people?
Trump may not get prosecuted even if there is clear documented evidence that his tax returns contained perjury. He may not be prosecuted even though he acknowledges he took documents from the White House. He may not be prosecuted for leading a multi-pronged plan to overturn an election.
There are perils to prosecuting him. If a president's successor prosecutes the defeated president of the opposite party, it sets a dangerous tit-for-tat precedent, even if the former president is dead-to-rights guilty. What constitutes truth in a courtroom may not translate out in the public square, where Trump and others will be adamant in calling the prosecution illegitimate. Trump has uncritical and loyal support. Trump warns that 'terrible things are going to happen" if he is prosecuted. Prosecutors must consider the risk of losing even an airtight case. They may encounter one or two jurors who simply will not betray their hero, no matter what.
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| The Hill |
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15 comments:
I think it's very important not to conflate individual justice with group social justice, or meta-justice. Likewise, one shouldn't gauge equality in justice by way of selected, politically-loaded outcomes. Otherwise, it's just reflexive rooting for one's home team.
The remedy for perceived deficiencies in conferring the presumption of innocence is not to constrict it further. Not unironically, Professor Hilliard's opening line here is, "Whether Trump ever pays for any of his many crimes...." No need for a trial?
Valid social critiques notwithstanding, the bald claim that "[l]ack of power and money are what determine guilt" is largely counterfactual. Reductionist power dynamics do not retcon reality, unless one is deeply cynical, fatalistic, or....grounded in critical theory!
Full circle.
House Arrest Mar-A-Lago
Our self-proclaimed “land of the free” has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and it isn’t only money that determines who gets locked up. African-American adults are 5.9 times as likely to be incarcerated as whites and Hispanics are 3.1 times as likely. Incredibly, some still argue that systemic racism is no longer a problem in the U.S. At the risk of sounding “woke,” allow me to suggest they aren’t jailed in such numbers because they’re inherently inferior.
Trump stole millions through his fraudulent charity and university but never spent a day in jail. In contrast we have Timothy Jackson, an African-American, serving a life sentence without possibility of parole after shop-lifting a $159 jacket. To point out the obvious, the former was far worse.
The option of the. FEDERAL Justice system abdicating responsibility for holding trial for purported crimes and treasonous acts of a president then continuing as former president because of the discord and threat of really bad stuff it would have generated would further the mission of undermining our Constitutional Democratic Republic.
Allowing the setting of a precedent of impunity for evil acts of a US President both in and out of office even unto trying to invalidate an election up to and possible seditious treason seems the more dangerous path. Trump will be a CAUSEBmartyr weather wat. We cannot anger the Trump crowd further. Short of MORE killings and destruction. If the insurrection manifests, there will no fence sitters and the sides will be visible for all to see
With the exception of sex offenders, primarily child molesters , inmates come from lower class lifestyles. Go into a court room and view how deferential judges are toward high priced attorneys. Having noted that, almost all inmates are actually guilty of their crimes. Do rich people go to jail for possession of a controlled substance? The answer is no, they do not, but plenty of black males and females do at least in Alaska.
Regarding Timothy Jackson and that life sentence for shoplifting the $159 jacket...
The rest of the story:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/life-sentence-stealing-159-jacket/
A case could be made that Washington DC, specifically Congress and the DOJ, is a better example of failing to protect law abiding citizens from criminals. The perpetrators of an attempted coup have so far been given a pass, so what’s to stop them from trying again?
"Life is unfair" is a Republican mantra used to excuse all manner of injustices. Let's keep doing better than that in our sights.
Not prosecuting someone for fear of their supporters is bowing to the most base form of intimidation. Politicians are indicted all the time, too often, with no worries about their voters staging a jail break. That this one is threatening is a sign of "consciousness of guilt", and all the more reason to proceed.
The DOJ has a long apolitical tradition for this exact purpose.
As far as the rogue juror theory goes, I really doubt that has any bearing on bringing the indictment. If there is a trial, which I doubt, there will be a deal, the rule of law will be upheld, and that is more important than the outcome.
What we law-abiding citizens need is protection from all criminals. Preserving democracy isn’t going to help anyone very much if they get gunned down in the street by some thug.
It's very important for juries to be chosen based on diversity, equity, and inclusion, among other factors. Judges must make sure that this happens.
In 1955, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam murdered Emmett Till. They were acquitted. Then they confessed and sold their account of the murder to Look Magazine for $4000. This past June, an unserved arrest warrant for Carolyn Bryant Donham was discovered at the courthouse; last month, a grand jury decided not to indict her. So there...
Byron De La Beckwith was tried twice in the '60s for murdering Medgar Evers. Each trial resulted in a hung jury. In 1994, he was convicted. The point is that these cases are the tip of a very large iceberg when it comes to the perversion of justice.
Cases like these are examples of terrorism. Such terrorism worked to suit the purposes of white supremacy, except that Emmett Till's case in particular helped to inspire the civil rights movement. But when you see similar violence against African Americans now, you're seeing that terrorism continues to be part of our system. These cases are a different type of case from the Black on Black murders in Chicago that some whites on talk radio never seem to tire of bringing up.
Let's strive for liberty and justice for all.
Anon @ 4:07:
Serious question in response to your historically valid comment: Do we best ensure liberty and justice for all by assuming, even selectively cheering, that prospective jurors in 2022 will vote based on race solidarity?
The point made in this blog is well taken. A person of color is far more likely to receive a lengthy prison sentence for a petty crime than a wealthy white man like Trump ever will for treason, much less for his pettier crimes such as massive fraud. So much for liberty and justice for all.
As Rick Millward said, we can do better. We need to keep striving to achieve the ideals our nation was founded on and finally eradicate the remnants of systemic racism that has afflicted it for all these years and could still be its undoing.
I'm grateful for these comments because they have helped me clarify the issues in my own mind. Expensive lawyers are paid high fees to keep their clients' criminality out of court in the first place. So, the real issue isn't even incarceration rates. Rather, it's the fact that justice in America is what is bought when we pay high priced lawyers. As an earlier commenter observed, this insidious practice may not be so obvious to the general public because exceptions are made in high profile Epstein-type cases involving sexual trafficking and the assault of minorities.
To L.D.:
I hope we don't get in trouble with the blog author for cross talk. My answer is, "No." We should not selectively cheer jury voting on the basis of race solidarity when juries are predominantly non-white. And I think that race solidarity does enter into jury deliberations in some cases; this will continue until America loses its crazy preoccupation with race. This said, all-white juries are a problem, not a solution.
As for expensive lawyers, I was on a jury once. It was a criminal case--sex abuse--in Medford. The defendant was the teen age Latino friend of the alleged victim's older sister's boyfriend. The alleged victim was white. The jury voted to acquit based on reasonable doubt. The jurors didn't trust the victim, the witnesses (other than the police, but they played a minor role in the proof), the defendant, or the lawyers. For what it's worth, the lawyers--prosecution and defense--were two of the best in town; but, to reiterate, the jurors didn't trust 'em.
Subject to correction from the moderator, I believe that good faith exchanges are kosher even among those not necessarily otherwise in agreement. Trolling and flame wars, as it were, are strictly verboten.
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