An excellent wish list

An excellent wishlist of things to fix from my mother's blog.







http://theoutlawcat.blogspot.com/2014/07/i-think-as-with-any-other-nation-it.html?m=1

[Rant] The Prosecutor and the Penis Pump

I had thought to wait until I was ready to post about prosectutors but really, this won't wait.  Its not just a constitutional post, it's the single most exemplary example I've found in the last three years as to why prosecutors are a serious problem.

Summary: 17 year old in Virginia Sexts a 15 year old.  Conservitard parents complain.  Blood thirsty ghoulish prosecutor is prosecuting him under CHILD PORNOGRAPHY LAWS and on top of everything else prosecutors are being summarily insane and asking for drugs to inflate his penis to ensure that they can accurately identify the guilty part in the image.

I mean, talk about perverse.  This proves that they are out of control.  There are almost no checks on their power.  We have internal affairs for police...what do we have for prosecutors?  The Duke LacRoss player prosecutor was removed from office but faced no criminal charges.  It's insane, unjust and rediculous.

And it needs to stop. Perverts like this guy should not sit in the DA's chair.

[Cons] Article 3, Section 1 - A Right to a Trial By Jury (2 of 10)

Why is it that in American courts, the distribution of power looks like this:

When it should look like this?

Let's look at this in detail, shall we?

I doubt many people are going to argue with this, but in the small chance that they are going to, let's examine the current status of things:

The Judge has almost limitless power in their court room to keep order, to hold people in contempt, to instruct the jury, to decide what evidence does or does not make it into the trial etc.  There are limits but primarily, they involve appellate courts.  Within an actual trial, the judge has a lot of power.  And definitely the most of it.

The prosecutor is next.  They select the jury with the defense.  They make plea bargains with the defense.  They get the first look at evidence given by law enforcement, and even though they are legally obligated to share it with the defense, often they don't, so in terms of practical power, the prosecution is the 2nd most powerful entity after the judge.

The Defense is still more powerful than the jury, because the jury gets selected by the defense.  The defense gets to ask questions, just like the prosecution, and also gets to make a closing argument and help argue about what the jury does or doesn't get to see.

The poor Jury is often selected down to the lowest common denominator with people who couldn't find a reason to get out of Jury Duty, people who have no expertise in law or the case are often selected above those that do, they can ask no questions, and even after the dog and pony show of what evidence can or can't be seen, they are often forced to find against defendants or for them given explicit instructions on the law by the judge.  They can't ask for their own advice from an independent source.  They can ask for clarifications but almost never do, and also can be held hostage until they come to a unanimous decision.

Summary of Events as Stand
It's a pretty pathetic system all around, but then why do we have them? The idea of jury trials started with the Magna Carta, in which nobles demanded a trial by other nobles (a jury of their peers) rather than the capacious judgement a king could often hold over them.  This continued down by tradition until commoners also got this right.

But in the UK, they have barristers and actual lawyers who get up and make arguments in trial vs those who make the legal arguments.  They won't say it, but if you have lawyers who specialize in making argument in court only, perhaps you can recognize the fact that the whole thing is a show and often comes down to makes the most convincing argument to the jury.

So if it's to some degree all a show, why still bother? Well in part, because it helps increase our confidence in the courts knowing that 'our peers' can help protect us from criminal abuses and we can argue (or have someone argue) our case.  More importantly, even though people recognize that juries make mistakes, especially in highly technical cases, the appellate courts can make it up by fixing things down the line.

But confidence in the courts is on the wain.  Why? In part because we now recognize what has always been true, that the vast majority of judges, being human, are political, and as such more likely to follow their politics than their respect for the law.  And until such time as we can have an AI programmed specifically to follow the law and the law only, ignoring politics, we must acknowledge that justice, being a human institution, is inherently political.

So the question then in courts is how to maximize faith in the Rule of Law, while at the same time reducing politics as much as possible.  Life time appointments and confirmations between branches seems well and good, but such a mix got us a court that decided that corporations are people and have unlimited free speech and religious exemptions as well.

In short, American courts are now a total joke.  But try telling a judge that, and he has unlimited power to lock you up for nearly as long as he likes until appeal or you apologize in sack cloth and ashes for your 'contempt' of court.  Your 1rst amendment to free speech doesn't matter too much if you insult a judge in their court.

What to Do About It?

I mentioned in my last post on this that we need to rebuild from the ground up, including the elimination of Common Law.  I'm entirely certain anyone who currently works with the law might find this a horrible idea, just like creating a new constitution, especially anyone with a stake in the current system including lawyers, judges, some politicians and law enforcement.  But the people at large?

Maybe.  If you can make a case for it.  And I think there is a case to be made.  To keep politics out of the courts you need to democratize it, disburse the power away from institutions and away from the elite few who can be corrupted by corrupt interests.  If anyone can be on a jury then bribing the entirety of the population can be much harder.  Protecting the minority is important, but in our current system, all minorities aren't protected, just the select few who happen to be favored by the current factions in power.  Any justice system which does not protect ALL minorities; racial, sexual, genetic, political, or economic, is an unjust system prone to abuse.

A judge should be there to ensure the rules are followed, not to decide what evidence does or does not get presented.  A prosecutor should represent the interests of those enforcing the law, not the political aspirations of an idiot who needs a head.  And the defense should represent their client, fairly and with equal information to the prosecution, of equal ability with the prosecution in resources and the like.

Each of these things needs to be informed, but to me it starts with the Jury.  Juries need to be able to ask questions and they should be able to organize themselves, and they should not be able to have to be absolute to convict.

Let's look at the counter arguments:

People are Stupid, so thus will Juries be: Yup.  This is true.  But the idea that judges and the prosecution somehow counter this is ludicrous.  Millions of people are thrown into jail in this country to satisfy the political aspirations of prosecutors who want career advancement by being 'tough on crime.'  Justice is political, and politicians are slime.  So do you want corruption or stupidity? Corruption is hard to fix without a justice system that is just, whereas stupidity can be fixed with time as people learn the fact and are able to educate themselves.

Majorities will oppress minorities.  Well first, this happens all the time with  our current system, but if you can design a political system that gives the minority power (such as requiring multiple votes over time to amend a constitution or pass a referendum) you can also fix this by allowing multiple juries to see the same case.  It does mean that the ability to avoid being tried for the same crime twice might be out the window, but then again, given the fact that our current system of government essentially allows a prosecutor to charge someone with something different but for what is essentially the same crime over and over; or that a federal prosecutor can charge for something when a local prosecutor can't, that argument is by practicality also made null and void.

There should be rules in a court room. There should be lawyers.  But the basic of how the trail occurs and the law that is being tried need to be fundamentally rewritten and the best place to start is with the idea that it is the JURY not the lawyers or judges who make that determination.  

Five solutions to make this happen:

1) Give Juries, not judges, the power to declare contempt of court.

2) Give Juries, not judges or lawyers, the power to determine what evidence is seen by the court.

3) Allow the creation of technical juries for technical trials or sub aspects of trial.  Have a case that involves DNA evidence? Allow a jury of scientists to hear the evidence rather than a jury of people who think that science is evil.  

4) Allow Jury duty to serve as donated Civic Time (see a future as yet written post on this).  If all citizens are trained in law and law enforcement from the day they enter school, then it becomes much more possible to have quality juries.

5) Hold Jurors accountable for deviant or corrupt behavior.  If a juror or jury takes a bribe, acts in a fashion that is inappropriate (mocking the defendants, lying, conviction of guilty for racist reasons etc) and is held accountable for it by another jury, then they will take this much more seriously.  Higher courts from wider jurisdictions (especially federal ones) can find the unreasonable behavior of a small pocket of the country (like say...East Texas) and convict appropriately.

It's not a perfect solution, but I think its better than our current system and worthy of experimentation.  I'll address Jury Selection in my next post.

[News] The Supreme Court is about to NERF Unions

So unions have to argue for benefits for everyone but a bunch of conservative freeloaders can get all the benefits and pay for none of it? That sounds like a racket, and only a conservative would call that justice.

[Cons] Article 3, Section 1 (1 of 10) Actual Breakdown of the Text, General Thoughts

The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.

It is evidently clear from the creation of the document, both in the size of the article and the flexibility of interpretation, that of the three major branches, the authors of the constitution gave the least thought to the Supreme Court or to the law in general.  Why would they?  American Courts worked perfectly well in their eyes, and the English legal system was 'the envy of the world.'  While America had revolted against Monarchy and Kings, thus necessitating a new experiment in legislative and executive activities, courts were just, you know...COURTS.  Everyone knew how they worked.  They knew they wanted a supreme court that could decide federal cases, and they knew that it was a good idea to have lesser courts under that.

And they basically said, "Hey congress, you guys just handle this mess, OK?"  They put a few safeguards in that seemed obvious at the time, such as not being able to suddenly state that a judge was earning nothing so congress could destroy their lives, but that's about it really.  Nothing about how many people there were in the court, not about how many courts they should be, and that's about it.

In the other two articles (which I'll address later) they specified which cases were to go to the court, how they were supposed to be tried, and that political cases were specifically in the hands of the legislature...and they defined treason.  That's it.   

So is it any wonder then that our system is so messed up?  The amendment process does add some more guidelines, especially in the Bill of Rights.  At the time, many people thought we didn't need a bill of rights because they didn't want to 'lessen' our rights by defining them.  Can you imagine where we'd be now without it, in this second gilded age?

Due Process would be optional, unless the executive declared it classified and a state secret, oh wait, that was recently declared unconstitutional.  Good luck getting it enforced.  To quote Andrew "I like Genocide" Jackson, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!" This is a serious problem in our court system as well.

But as I mentioned in the intro to this article, American justice is a farce.  So aside from the vast amounts of what is NOT written into Article III about how courts should work, is there anything wrong with what IS there?  Not really.  The court is very ill defined, so checks and balances against it are slim at best.  The court, thanks to English Common Law (enshrined into our constitution in the little known 7th amendment), has a tradition of doing things a certain way.  Why do people obey the court? In part because federal judges have tremendous power given them by congress by statute and also by tradition, but in part it is largely because people simply recognize the court as being the final arbiter of these kinds of decisions.

But even that has had to be taken by the court.  Marbury V Madison, in which the court basically said that it had the right to interpret the constitution is even now contested by psychopathic conservatives.  If it isn't written in the document, it isn't acceptable to them.  And really, who am I to disagree? Our courts require lofty standards of documentation and legalisms, which in turn require lofty standards of regulation and arguments, but is it viewed as fair?

The vast majority of the population do not believe so.  So if the court isn't viewed as fair, why do we put up with it? Partly inertia, and partly because we view the alternatives as far worse.  But as I have mentioned earlier, just because 'democracy is the worst form of government except all the others' doesn't mean you don't examine other methods.  Just because Article V strikes terror into the hearts of many for what it could do doesn't mean we timidly fail to explore an alternative to what is clearly a fundamentally unfair and utterly broken process.

And I aim to do just that.

[Cons] Article III, Section 0 - Not Justice

Before I start with Sections, I want to explain why I'm doing Article III before Article II.  Article II is about the executive, but the majority of the abuses by the executive, except some of the more recent and blatant abuses of power, Are taking place because of the very nature of our laws.  Look, remember that civilization is an illusion, and such one of the most important things that Government can do is maintain that illusion through the belief that there is Justice in the courts.

Yet no one really believes that, especially about the justice department of the American government.  The lists of abuses are endless, but I'll cite some of them here.

• Dozens, perhaps hundreds of innocent men killed by bloodthirsty out of control prosecutors.
• Failure to prosecute Wall Street Bankers who stole trillions from America because they are 'Too Big to Jail.'
• The National Director of Intelligence LIED to congress, committed Perjury and has yet to be prosecuted despite claims that they are 'looking into it.'
• George W. Bush, war criminal and advocate for torture, has not been held to account by the Holder Justice department.
• Federal raids on peaceful medical marijuana dispensaries in direct contravention to the 10th amendment to the constitution AND their own given word.
• Recurring prosecution of whistle blowers trying to expose the festering rotten corruption in the US government whilst allowing other evils to flourish.  Attacking our own immune system of truth.
• A Supreme Court that has said that Imminent Domain can be used for the rich, that Corporations are people, that money is speech (and thus the rich are entitled to more rights than the rest of us), and so many, many, many abusive decisions in favor of insane police privilege. 
• Failure to prosecute the police who destroyed peaceful Occupy Protesters in a massive federally coordinated attack.  In fact, one of them was even given a fat check for 'trauma' he suffered from complaints filed against him.
• Minorities are singled out by law enforcement, not given proper representation, and executed at far higher rates.
• You have to be rich or go into debt or find a lawyer that likes you to take on the rich and powerful in the courts of justice.
• Your public defender is under paid, over worked and is likely working to make you plea for a bargain even if you did nothing wrong.
• Your prosecutor is looking out for their own career prospects in most cases, rather than than whether or not you are guilty if you happen to be the one the police pin it on.
• For profit private prisons rake in the money, in some cases bribing judges to set up little factories to send them prisoners. In other cases pressuring law makers to make tough crime penalties to get more prisoners for rural counties to increase their political clout.

The list goes on and on and on and on.  But one of the root causes of the problems, aside from lying sociopathic conservatives and libertarians, is the moderates who buy into the 'abusive government regulation' schtick the sociopaths spin, BECAUSE IT IS TRUE.  And why is our government filled with abusive regulations?

In large part because it must.  Our justice system uses English Common Law, which states that a prior judgement takes priority until a judge changes it in a new case.  The idea of a jury of one's peers is at the heart of American justice.

But lawyers get to lie to juries with half truths.  Judges lie to juries.  Juries are just little pairs of eyes, carefully selected for their stupidity.

In the adversarial system, the Prosecutor is supposed to represent Justice (ie US), the defending lawyer their client and the judge (US) or at most Justice.

Does anyone REALLY REALLY believe that these people represent us?  The thing is, when you meet a conservative face to face, they seem like nice people.  It is easy to forget that they believe things that will kill all life on earth, and that may very likely threaten the freedom of your children.  Abstractly, perhaps, you may be aware that conservatives are liars, but when you see someone's face, are you likely to call them a liar?

Hell, I'll admit I'm not.  I might believe my friends are liars when they are speaking AS a conservative, but I don't want to call them liars.  No one does.

So of course a prospective Jury, sitting in a box, being asked questions by a defense attorney or a prosecutor doesn't want to think that the entire thing is a farce, that the judge may be insane or abusive and totally unaccountable for their actions, that the prosecutor may have been hiding evidence from everyone and will NEVER be held accountable for it, and that the defense is trying every trick in the book to help their client, but that may involve taking a shady crooked deal for less time even though they are TOTALLY INNOCENT?!

The regulatory weight of our schools, our governments and our regulatory agencies are in large part based upon this system that carries greater and greater weight as the centuries pass, property law from the time when people thought people could be property echoes down upon us like a ton of bricks.  Laws passed by useless legislatures and regulations must withstand the connivance of corporate lawyers seeking to game the system to make a quick buck.

It cannot continue like this.

And before we speak of enforcing laws, we must discuss fixing the system that tries them.

More Evidence Congress and all Legislatures in General

Are bad and should be abolished.  At a minimum it is evidence the US Constitution needs to GO!