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On 3/24/2009 1:55 PM, andrel wrote:
> Good question. We tend to have people trained to evaluate the evidence.
> I think that works here, but I know it fails in a lot of other places.
What, you mean professional jurors? One of the basic tenets of our
judicial system is a review by a jury of your peers, rather than
professional jurors.
< re: innocent people getting convicted >
> Sure. But in the opinion in this country in the case of the US it is
> built into the system. If it happens here it generally is investigated
> to see how it did happen and how to prevent it.
At this point, however, you're leaving it to the courts to ensure that
innocent people do not get convicted. Here, we leave it to the public,
in the form of a public jury.
> The suggestion in the video is that the police does not need real
> evidence but can get convictions by twisting someones words into
> "evidence".
Do you think personal testimony is not evidence?
You can blame the British for the one... our tradition of "hearing"
evidence comes from the English legal system :)
> I think you are probably right as long as you are middle class white. I
> have heard some stories that not everybody is that lucky.
Now you're conflating the issue with racial prejudices. The two issues
are separate; if you're the victim of racism, you could be screwed no
matter what the "main" subject is, be it lending practices, police
investigations, or just getting a good meal at a restaurant.
Let's get back to the judicial system.
Anyway, as I said before, the main issue here is that we leave such
determinations to a public jury. They need to be convinced that there
is no "reasonable" doubt of guilt. The problem with leaving such
determinations to the courts (or professional jurors, which amounts to
the same thing because they become a part of the system) is that the
courts themselves may be corrupted.
Our current system was put in place largely as a reaction to the abuse
that the public suffered from the judicial system at the time. Innocent
people were being arrested but never charged with crimes, or convicted
with little or no evidence. In many cases, the authorities flat out
lied about evidence in order to convict the men they were after.
So we threw them out, and started our own system that was controlled by
public review.
--
...Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com
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