Why America's Legal System Is Corrupt, and How to Fix It (Improve It)

Imagine, one day, you find yourself surrounded by police and arrested. What for? The officer says, “Harassment.” And off you go to jail. You wait in jail, under bright lights, for a day, denied water, blankets, a pillow, or mattress while water is denied you and you’re surrouned and standing on filth and debri of all kinds, including deadly bacteria.

Finally, after two days, you’re given a sheet of paper that says you’re in jail for “harassment” and that your bail is $5000. After two days of waiting, your pet at home is starving, and its cries alert neighbors, animal control comes, and takes the pet away, and charges you with animal neglect and cruelty while you’re in jail, you’re also missing two days of work, and because you don’t remember the number or have any friends and the jail phone book is torn up (and hasn’t been replaced in two years and won’t be for two more) your boss decides to fire you. On top of that, you’re rental bill is due during the time you’re in jail, and utility bills, and because you were fired, you can’t pay for either, let alone to hire a professional attorney. You then decide to use the public defender, and are told, “Your charge wasn’t illegal, there’s nothing illegal about hold a camera facing someone’s deck in an apartment complex when you’re not trespassing.” The public defender then stands with you before the judge, and the judge says, “Misses Hagitha Morbid Obese Sixty-five-year-old accuses you of recording her deck window, are you guilty or not?” And you reply, “Not guilty.” Your defender then says judge, “Slim chance anything can be done to prosecute this case, judge.” The judge replies, “Are you aware of your client’s past?” a subtle reference to severely false accusations against you that are completely unrelated to the case and an attempt to bias the defender, who is supposed to be defending you, and not personal-feelings-vendetta justice. The public defender looks uncomfortable, and remains silent. The clearly biased judge, biased over allegations from a year ago, then says, I’m going to set a trial for this, June 11.

The defender then hands you his card and a paper over this case. Later, after one day more of being in jail, you are released, five miles away from your home, and stranded from lack of money. On your way home you lose the card and paper. You then begin searching to find out again who your defender is and when the trial is. You also check your mail as you usually do, but find nothing about any court date. Then the day before your trial, you call two different numbers for the courts of the county you live in, and finally get what you are told is the right one, only to be hung up on by the computer system once you’ve waited through it’s five minute long message. You then call again and after waiting again figure out which button you should press next, get a clerk to talk to you and after asking if you still have a trial date, wait for her slow computer to come up with the information you want. After waiting eight minutes and being put on hold, you’re told, “July 15, and call the day before since it’s tentative (meaning the case might be cancelled).

As you wait, one day, you start hearing dreadful knocks on your door, and when you try and look out your door peephole, you see it’s been smeared with vaseline and some blur of what appears to be a police officer waiting for you and being silent. You then experience this repeatedly over the days, and at one point, one tries to come inside, but finds the door locked, and you, terrorized thoroughly, covered in painfully itching hives all over your body, your hair has turned gray, and is nearly falling out as a result, and you having not slept for days, finally are at July 14. And you call to see if your trial date has been cancelled.

Again, after going through the same mistaken numbers and long waiting times, you’re told, “I see a warrant coming up.” You ask what it is for and you’re told it’s for missing your court date. You’re surprised and ask what is going on, and you tell the clerk that you were told “July 15″. The clerk replies, “It was June 11, July 15 would have been a Sunday,” and you repeat that that is what you were given a different date.” You then ask what can be done, and she tells you the bail is $302, and you ask if you’ll be arrested if you come in to pay and what will happen after, arrested or not, and she tells you that you’ll have to go before the judge and get a new court date. You ask if the warrant will still be in effect, and she says, “Yes.” You then ask if you can be arrested at court over the warrant, and she replies, “If the judge wants you to be.”

So, what will you do, knowing you are falsely accused, and have a biased judge in the system against you, and find out you will likely go before him again?

Finally you go to court after having been arrested and spending ten days in jail, in isolation, only let out for an hour a day, and the case is dismissed since it’s been established that Hagitha’s accusation doesn’t state any breaking of any laws. You are now out of a job, and unable to pay a large fine to your landlord, and have one less pet, due to it having died from lack of food and water.

After a few days, the same Hagitha accuses you of having come back and this time to have trespassed and recorded her naked. Once again police are sent after you, and you don’t know why, and find out you have a warrant again for harassment, stalking and trespassing and that you have no stated amount that would get you out of jail. You then pack up your things and live like a homeless person, in hiding, and eventually make it to another state, after having been repeatedly stolen from, losing your life’s work, which would have made you rich.

Was justice done?

I propose the Bible’s common sense law of witnesses be adapted:

“A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established.” – Deuteronomy 19:15.

The reason for a third witnesses is if the first two witnesses gave conflicting testimony in some parts of what they said or if subtle bias was detected in their testimony. Further, a person should not be arrested merely over something for which there is no hard evidence, and only three witnesses with conflicting testimony in key parts. Further, a person should not be arrested over testimony that was gotten by a wrong investigation, for example, investigating the witnesses while they are with each other, because if together, they could simply repeat what the other said. Further, a person should not be arrested over petty accusations, like, “He pointed a camera at me a few times” or “He shouted loudly about three times” and other things which were brief and didn’t lead to anyone losing anything of value or being injured physically. Judges should also not be allowed to try and bias a defender or prosecutor in any way.

Further, if a person arrested is disabled in any way, and is more than half a mile from his home, and has no transport of his own, he should be given a bus token, a bus guide for the local area or fare for a cab ride back home.

There are obvious other laws that could be made to prevent injustices like what I described (including ones to do with the treatment I described in jail) in my hypothetical scenario from occurring. One obvious one is to establish if the accusers are mentally ill, sick with any mental disorders that would make them prone to lying, like psychopathy and narcissism or are generally malicious towards others for no good reason and if they have any criminal history that indicates lying, such as financial fraud and lying in court.

Some might argue, “Police aren’t meant to be judges,” but that’s wrong. Judgment is required for everything in life, meaning, decision making. A police officer’s job is to determine whether or not crimes are being committed and if there is sufficient evidence and reason to file a charge of a crime and make an arrest, not to just arrest because someone said, “He took my picture without asking,” or something else that the police officer feels is bad and based on the officer’s personal feelings, harm or arrest you. So police are a type of judicial judge, they are the judge you encounter before being put before another judge, one who’s main job is to be perfect in knowledge of right from wrong and whether or not laws have been broken which he must give out some punishment or commentary for if he finds they have been broken.

Further, warrants should cease to be in action if bail is paid, and a person should not be arrestable (based on something petty) if it’s been established they are going to court to get a new trial or are already there to get one, otherwise the action is clearly dishonorable, malicious or a conflict of interest (discourages a person who a judge, DA, police or citizens wants judged to come in for judgment).

If the warrant laws or three witness laws are not made, whether it is disliked that they came from Bible or jealousy that it was written in it over 3500 years ago), America will continue to degrade, at least at the same rate, because they are not enacted. It will continue to degrade morally, and in organization and so efficiency and be drained financially due to interfering with jobs, lawsuits over that (if the imprisonment and accusations were found to be wrong), increasing the rate of injury and death lawsuits against jails and prisons due to overcrowding and mistreatment (like being put into an overcrowded jail), and the waste of building new jails and prisons which are an eyesore and not necessary. The financial damage done to citizens (and police and government officials who rely or need these citizens for their own financial well-being) hurts not just Americans, but people of other countries who rely on them to keep or improve their lives.

If these laws are not enacted, America will increasingly fill with ever more bitter or more bitter citizens, till the pot boils over and war breaks out do to the every growing injustice of all kinds, including police harassment, brutality, trespassing, property damage, sexual crimes and whatever else crimes they commit which are never reported due to fear, exhaustion and other reasons. Crime will not be allowed to go on forever, except in Hell, like shouting unjust insults, where it will only hurt the ones committing them, or any nearby prisoner, if your voice could be heard in Hell.

1965: Constitutional Law: The Peephole Problem

1995: Allegations of Corruption Against (NY) Police Rise 28%

1998: High levels of police corruption worry inspectorate

2008: Man Who Fell Off Couch Laughing at TV Show Ends Up Pepper Sprayed, Arrested
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,365645,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/lancashire/7449370.stm

2009: UK Couple told they cannot have their children back after being wrongfully accused of abuse

2009: Busts of corrupt US border police rise

2010: Worldwide corruption ‘on the rise’

2012: Police turned killer, one who supposedly couldn’t be corrupted

Prison Overcrowding in the United States

Prison and Jail Population Reaches 2.2 Million

Bail and Punishment: Many Behind Bars Have Been Convicted of Nothing

The American Experiment In Liberty Has Failed

It’s a failure because just as science is only as good as the scientists who add to it and use it, so the same is true for a government and its law enforcement system which are only as good as the people who are in government and uniform. And there are many more unjust people than just people in the world who are able to deceive, seduce or bribe their way into positions of authority, so the unjust people will always be the most successful because of their greater amount of resources, until God puts a stop to it.

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