...it doesn't always get better.

[pastwatcher]

Fuck this. Fuck that judge.

The start of the story of Cece McDonald is here, including the judge's awful decisions about which evidence to include in a murder trial. May be triggering. She does have people rallying in support, but they can't change the minds of the people on the case.

I didn't even know you could exclude evidence like the defendant's wounds from the actual prior attack, or the "victim's" history of assault and Nazi tattoo, from a murder trial. Doesn't that make it not a fair trial?

This is why so many people have no reason to trust the "justice system". Someone mentioned the comparison to the Trayvon Martin case, where all the circumstances and evidence are so different. Except, it seems the identities of the people involved are the only variables that matter.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/little_e_/]

Not just the justice arm of the system, but every last ounce of the legal system is incredibly corrupt and fucked up. (Okay, maybe wills are done reasonably. Most of the time.) Even when judges/prosecutors/cops/etc. aren't explicitly corrupt, the incentives are terrible and the lawyers only make shit worse. The plea bargain system only makes things worse.

The US imprisons a greater % of its people than any other 1st world country, probably more than any other country, period. We imprison more than Russia. And that's not to even mention the terrible racial biases in what we outlaw, length of sentences, police patrolling, etc.

A certain fellow I live with did a summer as a public defender. He had clients who'd been arrested for things like sitting on their own front steps ("loitering"). They start with a loitering accusation, then search you for drugs, try to step it up however they can. Get pulled over for a broken tail light, get your car searched. You can guess what skin tones his clients had.

This case doesn't sound exceptional to me at all--the judge's rulings sound about what I would expect--but only because I have seen so many cases that make me just want to flee the country. A 40 yr old substitute teacher imprisoned because her students were looking at porn on a school computer. Teenagers jailed for posting pictures of themselves on MySpace. A real-life friend accused of domestic violence, whose life was so destroyed that even though the case was dropped, she lost her job and home, changed her name and moved across the country to start again. And then there are the atrocious, 300$ an hour copyright cases I shan't bore you with, the patent cases destroying the development of new drugs and technologies, blah blah blah.


I don't mean to say that this case isn't a tragedy. I mean to say that the entire fucking system is a tragedy.

[pastwatcher]

"I mean to say that the entire fucking system is a tragedy"

Yeah, I agree with that. The system is horribly racist, and pretty bad for queer people; the system focuses on punishment in the first place when there are plenty of opportunities to get people productively engaged in society. And that whole mentality starts in our schools, which could change maybe. But the corruption keeps it going in criminal punishment.

[http://users.livejournal.com/little_e_/]

There are a lot more people making $$$ off of punishment than off of rehabilitation or compassion or even plain ol' justice.

I know I said it already, but dammit, we in the "land of the free" have the world's highest incarceration rate. That just never ceases to astound me. And the numbers are even worse for black folks. They're astronomical.

We live in a police state.

[pastwatcher]

Yeah that's what I meant by "the corruption keeps it going". The $$$. And the disdain for poor people, people who've been in jail, and people without jobs, that prevents a whole lot of economists and policymakers and voters from proposing/making/supporting effective solutions.