This adversarial model of prosecution vs defense is a bad set up. It encourages the prosecution and indeed police to cut all corners possible on the way to a verdict and we know this happens quite a lot with very little consequence. The prosecution also insists on pursuing cases that have clearly been shown in later years to be false convictions because they want to save face and not admit they got details wrong. A better justice system is built of two sides working together to find the truth and having avenues for admitting mistakes without losing face. There also should never be any convictions at all based on testimonies alone without any non-anecdotal evidence attached to the case. The media is also a problem, in that if a case is sufficiently public the prosecution essentially has to take the case to court to avoid massive criticism. Witness tampering is also severe and has been proven to happen by many governments across the world. Even offering deals to witnesses in exchange for testimony encourages people to lie and then their testimony should be inadmissible. I am not a lawyer I’m just very interested in these failings that seem to be continuing without any change. I don’t think people realize how underfunded the Innocence Project is or how many wrongful convictions there are on death row (I believe they claim 10% are wrongful). Innocent until proven guilty is not currently being upheld and the system is quite biased. Mass incarceration is affecting so many people and based on Puritan ideas of ‘reform’ rather than any evidence based studies.
Thoughts on the American legal system
This adversarial model of prosecution vs defense is a bad set up. It encourages the prosecution and indeed police to cut all corners possible on the way to a verdict and we know this happens quite a lot with very little consequence. The prosecution also insists on pursuing cases that have clearly been shown in later years to be false convictions because they want to save face and not admit they got details wrong. A better justice system is built of two sides working together to find the truth and having avenues for admitting mistakes without losing face. There also should never be any convictions at all based on testimonies alone without any non-anecdotal evidence attached to the case. The media is also a problem, in that if a case is sufficiently public the prosecution essentially has to take the case to court to avoid massive criticism. Witness tampering is also severe and has been proven to happen by many governments across the world. Even offering deals to witnesses in exchange for testimony encourages people to lie and then their testimony should be inadmissible. I am not a lawyer I’m just very interested in these failings that seem to be continuing without any change. I don’t think people realize how underfunded the Innocence Project is or how many wrongful convictions there are on death row (I believe they claim 10% are wrongful). Innocent until proven guilty is not currently being upheld and the system is quite biased. Mass incarceration is affecting so many people and based on Puritan ideas of ‘reform’ rather than any evidence based studies.