Could they be deported back to wherever they came from to reduce the load on our state system? Could they be turned over to their governments for them to keep imprisoned? Could the nations that the illegal aliens come from pay for keeping them in our prisons and jails?

Just wondering…

More importantly, it feeds the judicial machine and sells papers, advertising time on TV, and suchlike

There is indeed a big difference between innocent and not proven guilty. One means you didn’t do it; the other, merely that they can’t prove you did.

“But, Your Honor, this doesn’t really show he didn’t do it.”
Judge: “That’s for the jury to decide.”

“But, Your Honor, it was here a minute ago.”
Judge: “It’s your responsibility to keep up with it.”
(I’m sure a lot of criminals walked after Katrina and Ivan due to damaged evidence.)

“But, Your Honor, I thought he was going to tell the truth.”
(Actually, this one is hard to disprove, wonder how they did it.)

“Now you know, I’m going to have to bring up your history to give the jury a chance to weigh the reliability of your testimony.”
Witness(?): “Never mind.”
Again, they would be remiss to not do their best job and the jury actually does need to have some way to weigh credibility of witnesses.

“But, Your Honor, she’s served as an expert witness for years; I had no reason to believe she was making it all up.
Once again, part of the work of the defense. Noteworthy that OJ Simpson trial forced police and prosecution to be more careful with evidence and witnesses, shame they didn’t actually check the undisputable evidence, though.

Misleading arguments: “He is a member of The X Gang. Members of the X Gang sometimes commit murder. Therefore, he must have committed this murder.”
Things like that?

David for harsh punishment
of known infractions
on the part of prosecutors
just to keep ‘em honest

Yep, it surely is disappointing when the world turns out to be less than perfect. That’s part of the reason I try to avoid judges and charges. They are less likely to do you in if they never see you.

Treatment of judges is a real problem. When the framers of the Constitution were working on it, they realized they had to remove judges from the political process if possible. After doing so, they realized some judges should have never held office in the first place but very hard to get rid of them. That’s why Florida has votes on retention. This in turn raises the chance that some judges will rule unjustly, even if only slightly so, because they don’t want to incur the wrath of misunderstanding voters.

Innocence project looks for likely candidates to prove innocence or at least disprove guilt–not exactly the same thing.

David for omniscient saints

• Withholding exculpatory evidence from defense
• Deliberately mishandling, mistreating or destroying evidence
• Allowing witnesses they know or should know are not truthful to testify
• Pressuring defense witnesses not to testify
• Relying on fraudulent forensic experts
• Making misleading arguments that overstate the probative value of testimony

Judges are supposed to be impartial but they aren’t always. I know of a recent case, by a recently retired Escambia County judge, in which the prosecutor dropped some very serious charges against a young man because the evidence showed that while he was there, he was actually trying to prevent a crime rather than participating in it. Because he was on the property when it happened, the DA only charged him with a misdemeanor trespass but stated in court that she wished to stipulate that this young man was NOT guilty of any actual wrongdoing. He was on probation when this happened so he still faced violation of probation charges. The DA said that she was agreeable to time served since he really didn’t do anything wrong, was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The judge said that he had blocked an entire week out of his calendar in order to try this case, that he had read over the files and depositions and that he was upset because the DA had dropped the charges. He then proceeded to sentence the young man to 5 years in prison, saying that he had to be taught that his behavior was unacceptable. Now, how was that impartial? Aren’t they supposed to go into each trial with a fresh and open mind, no preconceived notions, and based ONLY on the evidence that is presented to them? Top it all off, the depositions, from both the participants AND the witnesses stated that this young man had NOTHING to do with the crime. I was very disappointed. I knew him to be a harsh judge but not an unethical one. I was proven wrong.

I estimate it to be 5.978679%. Just joking but doing so to remind that an estimate is a guess, could be right, could be wrong. We aren’t told what evidence supports that estimate or how it applies to severity of crimes. (Mine came from randomly striking keys.)

That there ARE wrongful convictions is reasonably certain. Some people act like public defenders don’t care if their clients are found guilty. This could be true for some, but personal pride (and desire to move up in the legal profession?) would tend to make them want to win their clients’ cases if possible. Personal pride and desire for justice motivates prosecutors to get convictions for those they believe to be guilty.

Very few actually want the innocent convicted. Only the prosecutors want the guilty convicted. (Judges are, of course, impartial.) But that leads to the question: How many of the guilty are acquitted because we want to avoid wrongful convictions? If you release a murderer, rapist, child molester because there is some faint chance he is actually innocent, you release a murderer, rapist, child molester back on the general population to do it again and again.

That’s not good either.

David for perfect justice