One thing I wish more people would realize - we don't actually need police or judicial reform. Use the system against itself.
Every criminal case goes before a jury. The jury's job isn't actually to decide guilty or not guilty, it's to decide punish or don't punish. Judges and lawyers do everything they can to align the system to "here are the rules, here are the facts, did this person break a rule?"
In reality the jury is meant to be a check on judicial overreach. A jury of one's peers decides if you should be punished. If enough cases are decided despite the letter of the law, the law will be changed. See prohibition for a prime example.
How would that have helped in this case? What you're saying makes no sense. The police made up a bogus warrant against Afroman, added a "kidnapping" charge to it solely so they could bust out the battering rams and SWAT gear, terrorized his family for hours, and then left after finding zero evidence of a crime. He was never charged with anything. Nothing ever appeared before a jury. How would a jury of his peers have protected him from this blatant abuse of police power?
Yeah I feel there should be some redress here under the 4th amendment, unless facts are being held back I don't see how this search warrant was ever issued.
>..... If enough cases are decided despite the letter of the law,
In the US, the process IS the punishment. So even if people are found not guilty, they still incur the costs of impound fees, forefeiture of property destroyed or taken during arrest/search, loss of lawyer fees, having to check the box on job applications and whatnot. And laws don't change for the better because people get off on charges.
I the US the process can absolutely be a nightmare. But laws have absolutely changed because they were effectively unenforceable. Towards the end of prohibition juries were regularly refusing to convict anyone on drinking charges. Didn't take long, all things considered, for the law to be thrown out because it kept clogging up the legal system with cases that ended in not guilty.
My original point was simply that juries can be doing something about laws they disagree with now. Often this topic turns to a solution that is entirely rebuilding the system which is an almost impossible feat - the system is too bjgto just put on hold for a year while we all decide what to replace it with.
I don't know if you've ever been on a jury closely related to a case, but both the judge and prosecutor will describe the jury's job as hearing the law, revising the facts presented,and deciding if the law as written a broken. We have taken that lesson and treated it this way, but a jury can tell the lawyers to f$#& off and decide whether they want to punish not whether the law was broken.
95% or so cases ends with guilty plea. It is just too expensive to ask for trial. First, it costs huge amount of money. Second, if you go to trial and loose, you will get massively higher sentence then the one offered when pleading guilty. It can make difference between being released on symbolic punishment and several years. It is a huge risk.
Basically, for your plan to work, many people would had to self sacrifice.
We can and should make the legal system cheaper and more expedient, we lost our right to a speedy and fair trial a long time ago.
I do completely agree the plan would require a huge saccrafice and risk for quite a few people and that's a terrible thing to ask for. Unfortunately that's sometimes the only way to enact change when the system is so massive and rigged against us.
Tearing down and replacing the legal system in one shot will never happen and comes with its own problems and unknown damage. Using the system as-is against itself at least has a chance. I'd argue it wouldn't take too many cases before DAs realize they're putting massive amounts of effort into petty drug cases, as an example, that continue to lose in court simply because the jury isn't interested in punishing their peers for what msy technically be illegal in that case.
The number of criminal cases decided by juries in the US is less than 1.5%. The vast majority of cases are decided by plea bargaining. So the system has this potential issue covered already.
And if they lose, they are facing an order of magnitude longer sentence on a single charge. That's by design. Prosecutors offer you a lesser list of charges for you to go to jail, or they stack charges so that getting a conviction on a single one sends you a way for a decade or more should you try a jury trial.
100% agree - I'm not saying it's easy or risk free, it would take a huge sacrafice from some. What's the alternative though, tear the system down and replace it or do nothing?
If people vocally opposed the legal system and rallied around the idea that juries decide a person's fate rather than a DA, it might at least be less risky to go to trial. A BLM-scale movement for legal reform based on using the system against itself would go a long way to helping people at least make the decision whether they are willing and able to take the risk of going to trial.
Jury nullification is not a rule, it’s a quirk. Jurors can’t and shouldn’t be punished for their verdicts. Therefore, a jury can render a binding verdict that contravenes the law.
Talking about it in court WILL get you held in contempt of court, because you are openly declaring an intent to contravene the law.
My aunt said this happened when she was on jury duty over a "reckless driving" charge against a young driver. She said that the jury liked the guy and thought the police were being dicks. Apparently the judge was disappointed and the police furious with them :D
It seems that juries very often do not care about facts or the truth or that state has done it's job sufficiently. They just want to either punish the person or let them go... Which for me destroys any trust in whole system. And makes anyone who says that it works or is a good thing just lying probably with agenda.
I don't know if you've been on a jury or closely related to a case, but you'd be right to have no faith in the system as is.
Jury nullification (what I originally argued for) can't fix the system but it sure as hell can throw a wrench in the works. The process of a case going to trial can be a nightmare, but ultimately if juries exercise their right and regularly decide a case by what they think should actually be punished in the first place we might just see less resources spent on BS charges that are arguably pushed through just to get the prosecutor a promotion.
On the one hand, courts of law mean justice will (read: should) be served out equally and fairly.
On the other hand, jurors having the final say on how laws are enforced means the people always have the final say as one of several lines of defence against government tyranny.
Law isn't the basis of morality. In the end juries exist exactly for that reason. People should be punished if society at large deems them deserving, not if they broke a law.
Yeah that's a great idea. At first it would take a lot of time, which would prompt cities to address the source of crime in the first place instead of just punishing.
Unfortunately too many people can't afford to miss a single workday, and employers don't have to pay employees for jury duty.
The other alternatives are a) fundamental system reform that takes years and needs a short term solution or b) do nothing
I wasn't arguing that jury nullification is the best or perfect answer. I simply raised that I wish more people viewed jurt duty this way. The jury is in charge in a court room. No one gets convicted criminally unless they take a deal or a jury decides it. Short of blowing up the entire system, anyone with jury duty today could do somefhing about it.
Every criminal case goes before a jury. The jury's job isn't actually to decide guilty or not guilty, it's to decide punish or don't punish. Judges and lawyers do everything they can to align the system to "here are the rules, here are the facts, did this person break a rule?"
In reality the jury is meant to be a check on judicial overreach. A jury of one's peers decides if you should be punished. If enough cases are decided despite the letter of the law, the law will be changed. See prohibition for a prime example.