Wednesday, January 06, 2010

A fine demonstration of why people have lost faith in the Justice System

in this country; from one of the two links in the post,
Hrvol and Richter contend that prosecutorial immunity gives government officials the right to coerce witnesses to lie, withhold evidence pointing to a suspect's innocence, and work with police to manufacture false evidence of guilt, then use that evidence to win false convictions that send two men to prison for 25 years. Their motivation for making this argument is obvious; they'd rather not pay for their misconduct. But they're supported in amicus briefs filed by the U.S. Solicitor General, the National District Attorneys Association, and the attorneys general of 27 states and the District of Columbia. Notably, Cook County, Illinois, home to a number of wrongful convictions, also filed its own brief in support of the prosecutors.
Think about that; the Nation District Attorneys Assoc. says that a prosecutor who lies, fakes evidence, pushes people to commit perjury and KNOWINGLY put innocent people in jail should have complete immunity from being sued. That's just flat fucking disgusting. These bastards are supposed to care about finding the facts, the TRUTH of the matter, but they think they should be immune from punishment when they lie and cheat and...

From the other link:
Solicitor General Katyal and the attorney for the prosecutors in Powattattamie both made the absurd argument that the actual injury in Powattattamie occured when the defendants were wrongly convicted and jailed, not when the evidence against them was manufactured. Therefore, because the prosecutors were acting in their role as triers of the case when the injury occurred, they should be immune to lawsuit, even though they were acting as investigators when they conjured up the perjured testimony in the first place. Had they passed the evidence off to another prosecutor for trial, they could still be sued. This led Justice Anthony Kennedy to ask, "so the law is the more deeply you're involved in the wrong, the more likely you are to be immune? That's a strange proposition."

It certainly is. Katyal went so far as to argue that even police officers who manufacture evidence used to convict an innocent person may not be liable, so long as they tell the prosecutor ahead of time that the evidence has been faked—again because the actual injury occurs at the time of conviction, and at the time of conviction the state actor inflicting the damage is the prosecutor acting in his role as prosecutor, at which point he has immunity. Kennedy reiterated the problem: "Again, the more aggravated the tort, the greater the immunity."

If a prosecutor found out someone on the defense side manufactured evidence, they'd want them in jail; but the prosecutors think they should be free to do so...

Yeah, that video was right: don't talk to the police. At all. OR the prosecutors. Get a lawyer before you say anything other than "I want a lawyer." Because, according to the Justice Department, the police and prosecutors can lie and cheat and frame you and should face no penalty for doing so.

No comments: