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| Matters of Law - Corruption of the System?
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From the Forums:
[QUOTE=scotslad60;116970]Why isn't there a better, separate and unbiased body for investigating and, where necessary, prosecuting those involved in the law....... Police, Lawyers, Judges, etc....??[/QUOTE]
I think that, at least in the court and justice systems of the countries following the Anglo-Saxon and Western traditions (say, the United States, Great Britain, France), there are separate bodies dedicated to "policing" the police and courts. While there will always be people who abuse their office or who abuse the circumstances they find themselves in because of their office, the justice system and courts in those countries is as free of corruption as any in the world.
Which is not to say that it's perfect or that it couldn't be better.
Under the Anglo-Saxon tradition, the system is designed to prefer that nineteen guilty persons go free rather than convict one innocent. But it does not play out that way and that is because of the actors -- police, lawyers, and judges -- rather than the system.
Police officers become jaded. 95% of the people they deal with are guilty; many of those lie about it in seeking to avoid responsibility. Setting aside corruption, a jaded police officer may be simply unable to process actual innocence. The same is true for prosecuting attorneys, defense attorneys, and criminal court judges; "experience" -- the highly touted virtue in all elections -- may be inhibiting far more important virtues: the instinct to seek justice rather than a conviction.
So a policeman will lie to convict someone he thinks is guilty but who has what the officer regards as a technical defense. A prosecutor will withhold exculpatory evidence from a defendant she believes is guilty; she rationalizes that the evidence is misleading to what actually happened, that a jury might not convict if they saw it. A defense lawyer will not be as effective an advocate when he thinks his client is guilty. A judge will not exclude a confession he knows was improperly coerced if he believes that the confession is still true. And so the U.S. system and many others has convicted innocents despite the system being designed to prevent that result.
Corruption is not rife in our system, but jaded police, lawyers, and judges are, and it's actually more insidious to the goal of justice. And harder to regulate.
Hard to say cheers to that.
Odyssey
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Posted by LawOdyssey on 2008-07-21 12:12:25 | Rating: | Views: 16
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