Wojtek wrote,
> Carrol:
>> Hey, in Chicago the most important evidence for guilt is that some
>> cop arrested the suspect. Cops are never wrong, and it is
>> terribly unjust that they have to go to the trouble of proving
>> someone guilty.
>
> I guess that is only an intervening variable. In the US, the most important
> evidence of guilt is that a person does not have enough money to
> hire a lawyer - such folks face a much higher probability of being investigated,
> arrested, prosecuted, tried (instead of striking a plea bargain)
> and convicted.
Correct, except the bit about those unable to hire a lawyer having a "much higher probability" to be "tried (instead of striking a plea bargain)." There are very few trials, and from my experience no significant difference in rates of those able to afford lawyers and those who cannot. If anything, anecdotally, it goes marginally the other way. The "plea bargain" system involves the threat by police and prosecutor of incredibly draconian penalties for even minor offenses if found guilty after trial - penalties far beyond what exist in any other legal system. The "bargain" is that if the defendant pleads guilty the penalty will be draconian but less so. True, when a wealthy defendant has a credible threat to go to trial with a competent lawyer there is something more like a real bargain. But that is just one minor benefit. The well paid lawyer for a wealthy defendant is able to bargain even before indictment with the supervisors of the prosecutor, whom that lawyer is likely to know quite well. Been there.
Mike Tigar wrote a fine piece for MR "Lawyers, Jails, and the Law's Fake Bargains" on this question <http://www.monthlyreview.org/0701tigar.htm>
Mike shows that, in fact, for the great majority of the millions of prisoners in the US gulag (always worth reminding the creeps who babble of freedom in the USA that the US imprisons more of its population than any other state in the entire world - and if you add the millions more under penal supervision the difference becomes astronomical) the right of representation and access to the constitutional guarantee of due process was purely formal.
Many are innocent of the charges they pled guilty to, more are guilty of "crimes" that do not exist anywhere else (like the new one of being an "unregistered" but otherwise legal immigrant from a country on a list of islamic countries posted in the Federal Register), and more - without doubt the majority in all the US gulag - are serving sentences for what in virtually all other legal systems are minor offenses that would not have resulted in prison time at all or short sentences from which they would have long since been released. The "War on Drugs" has been the foremost tool in turning the entire US into a prison/police state. In the creation of this nightmare state there has been no difference at all between Democrats and Republicans. Clinton and his administration were among the worst.
john mage