>jks: Which I summed up by saying that you said the were creeps. Don't bes uch a literalist.
You summed up what I was saying by asserting that I was saying something completely different Justin. Now you are summing up what I said as something different again. Let me do my own summing up OK?
>Bill . although it is not known how often it happens. I don't know myself how often it happens, it is probably more common in jurisdictions which deny it ever happens.
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>jks: It's hard to know. I think it's probably fairly rare. Mainly they don't have to cheat. An extern of mine when I was clerking for a judge on the federal district couty was a law student who had been a cop for ten years, smart guy, very decent, had served in Interal Affairs investigating bad cops. I asked him a related question, how many cops are corrupt. He said, depends on what you mean. If you mean, take free coffee and doughnuts? All of them. If you mean, take money to bury a parking ticket or worse, virtually none, at least today. Hid Dad was a Chicago cop, and in his day, 20-30 years ago, it was a lot worse.
I think perhaps there are also pockets of very deep corruption, such as police squads devoted to enforcement of prostitution, gambling and drug law enforcement. These type of cops are routinely corrupt, wherever you go. A drug squad copper is a bent copper, its a law of nature. Obviously the bribe for burying a parking ticket wouldn't be worth the risk, but taking bribes isn't the sort of corruption we're talking about.
In any event, it isn't the honesty or otherwise of individual cops that is the problem, its a systematic problem. The cops aren't to blame, their job is to be suspicious, if they think someone is guilty then it is only human for them to use whatever means are available to get that person convicted. If the system gives them too much power, invests too much trust in the cops, then it is no good trying to blame the cops for what comes of that.
In the end, those like you, who insist that we have to trust the cops, bear as much guilt for any unjust outcomes as the bent cops, no matter how few or how many bent cops there might or might not be.
>: >As I note, your view is that no one should ever be criminally prosecuted for anything. It's a view, one can say that much for it.
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>Bill: I plead not guilty. Prove it.
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>jks: Please, Bill, don't be a jerk. If you say the people charged with investigating and prosecuting crimes can never be trusted because some of them are liars and framers, how can anyone be prosecuted criminally?
It is tragic that you can't conceive of any other way to proceed, except trusting the cops. The whole idea of separate judiciary is based on the idea of not trusting cops. If cops could be trusted we wouldn't need lawyers and criminal courts. But if lawyers and criminal courts are going to forget the basics and just take the cops word for anything, then they are not doing their job or earning their keep.
>Bill: Independent scientists? Verifiable, peer review of the interpretation of results presented to the courts? Videotaped records of interview. Is it that hard to work out?
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>jks. Yes, it is. Videotaped interviews, that's easy and a lot of jurisdictioons require it already. But independent scientists? Paid by whom? If the state, they are not independent. Given the volume of prosecutions, you are talking about setting upa huge and expensive bureaucracy--of state employees or contractors. Same with "peer review." What are you gonna do, farm this stuff out to universities? Where will you get people who are willing to do the work? The scientists I know at universities are not trained in forensics, and are too busy doing their own work to run checks on the cops.
I was talking about expert verification of how government forensic scientists analyse data. The same process that is used to peer review published scientific papers, rather than just letting any old hogwash be put up as scientific evidence. This will need to be done, because scientific evidence is becoming far too complicated for lawyers, judges or juries to understand. People have been falsely convicted because of biased scientific analysis of forensic evidence being presented to juries, who simply have to take one government scientist's assertions at face value.
Unless the system is modified, there will eventually be a serious backlash and juries will come to distrust all forensic evidence. But such evidence is basically very useful, so it is worth the expense to make it accountable, rather than expect it to be taken on trust.
Yes, farm it out. Let panels of experts review all forensic analysis before it is allowed to be put before a jury.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas