Your rambling diatribe reads like the Unabomber’s Manifesto.

I’ve come across the thinking before, “He must be guilty because he pled NOT GUILTY and the guilty always do that, therefore he must be guilty.”

It should be obvious that I am not confessing to any crime. I might decide to go into a life of crime at some time in the future, though, and if I do and am caught, I would like to make the system prove my guilt, not just decide to throw in the towel to make their lives simpler.

Beyond that, though, our Constitution was written by people who remembered the abuses of the British legal system of the time. There were judges who basically locked up juries until they gave a guilty verdict. Some judges or law enforcement types kept charging folks with crimes for which they had been acquitted several times already. There were those who would force a confession out of folks even when they just assumed guilt.

We decided we didn’t want that kind of justice system so we wrote the supreme law of the land to insist those accusing be able to convince a jury of common people the accusation was valid.

Even with all those safeguards, we keep running into cases where police decided to help a conviction along by planting evidence to strengthen the case against the defendant. One example coming to mind was in the murder trial of OJ Simpson. There was plenty of evidence which should have convicted him but there was evidence police planted evidence in his residence which had been found at the crime scene. If they’ll plant some evidence, a reasonable jury questions all the evidence they provide.

More recently in Illinois there were a number of people convicted based on falsified evidence and hundreds of convictions thrown out because they were gaming the system.

Those were Yankees and not expected to act decently like us proper Southerners but we can look closer to home and see where police lied about drug prescriptions for whatever reason. If they will lie about that, how do you trust them in criminal charges?

We have people today who figure it’s cheaper to plead guilty than to hire a lawyer to prove innocence. And there are some lawyers who might be tempted to suggest you confess to a lighter charge to reduce the worst that can happen to a client or to reduce their personal work load.

A deputy I used to know and respect told me of an incident where another deputy shot someone who he said produced a weapon, making it self defense. A number of deputies drove by the scene and tossed out assorted pistols and knives to shore up their comrade’s defense. One weapon showed up which actually had the fingerprints of the one who was shot but it shows there are cases in which our guardians will guard each other rather than worry about the truth.

I also remember a deputy sheriff who used to hang around the McDavid Volunteer Fire Department and was later found to have stolen several thousand dollars worth of equipment just from that one department. He continued to work as a deputy for several years after that. Would you want him empowered to decide all by himself your guilt or innocence?

I know one fellow who claims to remember when the lady in question used to work in another vice and got several male deputies fired FIFTY years ago, back in 1960 back when she was a good looking 37 year old. Would you have wanted any of her clients arresting you and deciding your guilt or innocence on the spot?

Sometimes charges are made up to cover wrong doing on the parts of others.

I sincerely doubt that’s the case here but just forcing folks to plead GUILTY would be wrong. We are all human and subject to temptation to do wrong. The only protection is to force us to prove our claims.

And regarding my earlier claim that it would not matter to me if there were a thousand witnesses to my future crime, you may remember hearing of Robert Kennedy, killed in front of a roomful of witnesses. They pretty much all testified he was shot from about twenty feet away.

The doctor who looked at the marks made by powder from the gun which killed him was able to prove he was actually killed from just inches to feet away, much closer than witnesses all agreed.

If I were his killer (and I deny that crime too) I would be tempted to say, “All these people agree I shot from 20′ away and the shot which killed him was from 18″ away, therefore my witnesses prove I wasn’t the one who actually killed him.”

Witnesses aren’t always reliable; some might falsely accuse others to get a lighter sentence or better jail conditions or simply off. Even video tape can be doctored. Evidence can be planted or removed. Sometimes the crime was justified or the law shouldn’t have ever been passed but the only way to say so is to vote NOT GUILTY even when you are.

It’s dangerous and subject to abuses but anything involving us humans is dangerous and subject to abuse. The most dangerous thing is to assume all charges are true. What if somebody accused YOU of killing Lincoln? Can you prove you didn’t or won’t build a time machine or otherwise come into possession of one and go back and kill him and frame poor innocent John Wilkes Booth?

I am not sure of what crime it is that you are confessing to, but it’s the criminals who plan to plead not-guilty and then depend on juries to do the wrong thing and set them free who have made jury trials obsolete.

Our law enforcement officers make the determination of guilt or innocence at the time of arrest. We should free our judges to devote all of their time to handing out fair sentences based on the evidence.

Oh , and I think she is old enough , to have known better .