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marmar

(78,217 posts)
Mon Jan 18, 2016, 07:25 AM Jan 2016

Chris Hedges: The Mirage of Justice


from truthdig:


The Mirage of Justice

Posted on Jan 17, 2016
By Chris Hedges


If you are poor, you will almost never go to trial—instead you will be forced to accept a plea deal offered by government prosecutors. If you are poor, the word of the police, who are not averse to fabricating or tampering with evidence, manipulating witnesses and planting guns or drugs, will be accepted in a courtroom as if it was the word of God. If you are poor, and especially if you are of color, almost anyone who can verify your innocence will have a police record of some kind and thereby will be invalidated as a witness. If you are poor, you will be railroaded in assembly-line production from a town or city where there are no jobs through the police stations, county jails and courts directly into prison. And if you are poor, because you don’t have money for adequate legal defense, you will serve sentences that are decades longer than those for equivalent crimes anywhere else in the industrialized world.

If you are a poor person of color in America you understand this with a visceral fear. You have no chance. Being poor has become a crime. And this makes mass incarceration the most pressing civil rights issue of our era.

The 10-part online documentary “Making a Murderer,” by writer-directors Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi, chronicles the endemic corruption of the judicial system. The film focuses on the case of Steven Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey, who were given life sentences for murder without any tangible evidence linking them to the crime. As admirable as the documentary was, however, it focused on a case where the main defendant, Avery, had competent defense. He was also white. The blatant corruption of, and probable conspiracy by, the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office in Wisconsin and then-Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz is nothing compared with what goes on in the well-oiled and deeply cynical system in place in inner-city courts. The accused in poor urban centers are lined up daily like sheep in a chute and shipped to prison with a startling alacrity. The attempts by those who put Avery and Dassey behind bars to vilify them further after the release of the film misses the point: The two men, like most of the rest of the poor behind bars in the United States, did not receive a fair trial. Whether they did or did not murder Teresa Halbach—and the film makes a strong case that they did not—is a moot point.

Once you are charged in America, whether you did the crime or not, you are almost always found guilty. Because of this, as many activists have discovered, the courts already are being used as a fundamental weapon of repression, and this abuse will explode in size should there be widespread unrest and dissent. Our civil liberties have been transformed into privileges—what Matt Taibbi in “The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap” calls “conditional rights and conditional citizenship”—that are, especially in poor communities, routinely revoked. Once rights become privileges, none of us are safe.

In any totalitarian society, including an American society ruled by its own species of inverted totalitarianism, the state invests tremendous amounts of energy into making the judicial system appear as if it functions impartially. And the harsher the totalitarian system becomes, the more effort it puts into disclaiming its identity. The Nazis, as did the Soviet Union under Stalin, broke the accused down in grueling and psychologically crippling interrogations—much the same way the hapless and confused Dassey is manipulated and lied to by interrogators in the film—to make them sign false confessions. Totalitarian states need the facade of justice to keep the public passive. ................(more)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_mirage_of_justice_20160117




9 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Chris Hedges: The Mirage of Justice (Original Post) marmar Jan 2016 OP
K&R We live in the most truth, liberty and justice Wall St cannot block. nt raouldukelives Jan 2016 #1
USA! USA! USA! /sarcasm/ - nt KingCharlemagne Jan 2016 #2
I would add that civil justice is in almost as bad a shape. Dustlawyer Jan 2016 #3
And don't forget "binding arbitration". n/t truth2power Jan 2016 #6
This got me: jomin41 Jan 2016 #4
Greatest country in the world! Enthusiast Jan 2016 #5
Maybe we were better 50 years ago--or maybe just the propaganda was better Proserpina Jan 2016 #7
+1 Enthusiast Jan 2016 #9
The mirage is almost undetectable by the low information voter when a confession is involved peasant one Jan 2016 #8

Dustlawyer

(10,519 posts)
3. I would add that civil justice is in almost as bad a shape.
Mon Jan 18, 2016, 08:53 AM
Jan 2016

It's something that is not talked about much, but individuals vs corporations generally fair badly. Americans have been filled with the "frivolous lawsuits" "jackpot Justice" "ambulance chasers" until we have several people in any jury pool that want on jury's just to make sure the plaintiff gets nothing no matter what the facts are. Add to that an appellate judiciary intent on wiping out all plaintiff awards because that is what their big donors want, and you have a big problem. The Texas Supreme Court and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals rule in favor of corporations over individuals over 90% of the time.

It may not seem like much until you or someone you love are hurt by some big company or Doctor, then you will see.

jomin41

(559 posts)
4. This got me:
Mon Jan 18, 2016, 09:04 AM
Jan 2016

"But when you look only at homicide convictions—by definition the most serious cases—false confessions are the leading cause of miscarriages of justice, accounting for a full 63% of the 113 exonerations.”
Imho, the war on drugs was the coup de gras of our criminal justice system.

 

Proserpina

(2,352 posts)
7. Maybe we were better 50 years ago--or maybe just the propaganda was better
Mon Jan 18, 2016, 10:18 AM
Jan 2016

turning all those non-persons into full citizens is hard work! Our injustice system can't keep up with it.

peasant one

(153 posts)
8. The mirage is almost undetectable by the low information voter when a confession is involved
Mon Jan 18, 2016, 01:04 PM
Jan 2016

I haven't seen "Making a Murderer" but I did see a similar documentary "Murder on a Sunday Morning" several years ago that was chilling and terrifying--it involved an accused child (poc) who "confessed" after being "interrogated" by the police. If you haven't seen it, watch it. A "confession" doesn't mean what most people think it does. From the documentary lovers' web page:

(2001) Mary Ann Stephens is shot in the head at close range in front of her husband. What unfolds next is one of the most appalling miscarriages of justice in American history.

http://documentarylovers.com/film/murder-on-a-sunday-morning/

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