Is Justice for Sale in the United States?
Question by : Is justice for sale in the United States?
Nicole Richie serves 82 minutes on drunk driving charges, and Lindsey Lohan gets one day for two cocaine charges. Would that happen to you or me?
Best answer:
Answer by pearlmar
Yes, and it always has been. This isn’t a new development.
Answer by fishhy
thats some BS.
i’d say we’d get locked up for quite some time.
All the jokes about lawyers had to come from somewhere, just ask any pimp on the street, people pay for the strangest things. If it appeals to their perversions, it just costs more, they make it legal, or it becomes a black market commodity.
Or Michael Vick getting a slap on the wrist for his torture of innocent animals, running a betting operation, illegal drugs, etc
Or Bill Clinton lying to congress
Or Richard Nixon authorizing the Watergate break-in
or any of a host of other crimes gotten away with.
You or me, we would be in jail until taxes were reduced.
Like _THAT’S_ gonna happen!
Its amazing what a great lawyer can do for you.
Actually, we have five separate and distinct legal systems in this country.
There is a First-class system for the top one-half of 1%, the very rich, who can afford very high-priced private attorneys, private court rooms and private judges, where their private affairs are adjudicated in private.
There is a second-class legal system for the 10% who are moderately affluent. It consists of public jury trials in public civil courts where it can take roughly a year to get a trial date; public jury trials in public criminal courts represented in public by private attorneys, with all the constitutional protections still left on the books.
Then there is a third-class legal system for the roughly 90% of the population who are of average means. It consists entirely of plea bargaining. There is no presumption of innocence, no proof of guilt by evidence, no cross examination of witnesses. Your public defender actually works for the same people who are accusing you (the state), and his job is to make sure you to take the deal, which is negotiated in private outside of your or any public scrutiny. Despite the name “bargain” there is precious little justice here. Due to three decades of “get tough” legislation, the ever escallating base penalties, mandatory minimums plus enhancements add up to astronomical sentences, in which you may be offered a “choice” between 90 years and a “deal” 18 years. (Google “Tulia” a small town in Texas, for an example of how innocent people are coerced into pleading guilty under this system.)
Then there is a fourth-class system for the roughly 3 million convicted felons who are on parole in this country. This is a system based on hearsay, opinion and whether your parole officer likes your attitude. You can be sent to prison for things that are not even illegal, like missing an appointment, having beer cans in your garbage, or falling asleep in front of the TV with a steak knife in your baked potato. Once in this system, it is not unusual for “criminals” to serve more time on parole violations than on their original sentences. This, of course, is the poorest 1% of the population.
The fifth-class consists of illegal immigrants (which includes anybody with a visa problem), asylum seekers, anybody the state department, the justice department or the President chooses to declare an “enemy combattant.” It consists of extraordinary rendition, being held on secret charges in a secret prison, where you are tried in secret, without a lawyer, using secret evidence (even from you), and you are not allowed to sue for any mistreatment or false imprisonment if, by some miracle, you manage to be acquitted and set free. The folks in Guantanamo fall in this category, as do the people in some 2-3 dozen secret CIA prisons around the world.