JUSTICE ?
E-Mail   By John Connolly  Bio/Address

    The purpose of this paper is to show what the legal system is like for those of us inside the bars.  Not everything here has happened to every person who has run afoul of the law, but it is a composite of what has happened and still happens to anybody who gets caught up in the legal system, justly or unjustly.
    This starts when you step into or are brought into the police station.  You have heard all of your life - "innocent until proven guilty."  Well, forget that.  Once you are in the interrogation room, they will insist that you are guilty and use every trick they can to make you confess or at least sound guilty.  The all time favorite is called "Good-cop Bad-cop" or "Mutt and Jeff."  The "Bad-cop" will typically hate your guts, he may rant, rave, and threaten to tear your head off.  He "knows" that you are guilty and he is tired of the fooling around and will tell you that he is going to "make you tell the truth, whatever it takes."  The "Good-cop" will be sympathetic and do everything he can to hold off the "Bad-cop."  He will also offer you water to drink or even a cup of coffee to the protest of the "Bad-cop."  He may even offer you a trip to the bathroom.  He is going to be your pal because "you are a human being and you deserve to be treated like one."  These two actors will do this all night if they have to.  
    When your rights are read to you they do not want you to remain silent or to have a lawyer.  Ask about a lawyer and they ask, "Do you think you NEED a lawyer?" There will be a tape recorder -  it gets turned off a lot during threats and promises.  Another trick they like to use is to turn off the tape recorder and feed you what they want you to know.  For example, "You did it like this, didn't you?"  They will then give you the details and turn the tape recorder back on.  So much for, "the only way he could have known that was if he was there."  After being worked on all night like that some people will confess out of exhaustion, some (mentally ill usually) will confess because they expect to go home because they hear, "Just tell us what we want to know and we can all go home."
    Once you are officially arrested, things really get started.  Your first trial happens in the newspapers and on the TV news.  Needless to say you are guilty and don't have the benefit of a lawyer with them.  They protect themselves from legal action by terms like: "allegedly," "sources say" and "a source close to the case says."  When the newspapers say, "sources" or "a source close to the case" that means the DAs office or the police station.  Keep in mind that the people reading those stories and watching your case on TV will one day bee your jurors.
    Things go down hill from here.  If you don't have a lot of money, you end up with a public defender who more often than not is drastically overworked and underpaid.  Even if you have a capital case, you will be on the list with many others and that will show at trial time.   You probably won't have the money to hire a lawyer because you no longer have a job. Anything that you were paying payments on like your home, car or furniture will wind up repossessed.  If you are married, you can no longer support your family which is a big hardship on them.
    Did you know that for a felony, they can put off your trial for 2 years?  On a capital case, it's 3 years.  There are not many bank accounts that will last that long!  During this time you know almost nothing about the legal proceedings.  If you have a public defender, you will probably hear more about your case in the newspaper than you will hear from him.
   When trial time gets close things speed up again.  You may see the lawyer once in a while.  The newspapers and TV will also pick it up again.  Your family will also be hounded by the news media.  If your family refuses to speak to them or tells them to get lost, a common tactic the news media will use is to write something inflammatory to provoke a response.  Or they call your family and pretend to be someone else.   To provoke a response they have even been known to do things like insinuating that your family might have been covering something up.
    The jury selection itself is educational, especially in capital cases.  The selection will start with trying to eliminate the ones who come in with their minds made up about your guilt.  Upon being asked, "As you look at this man sitting here is he guilty or is he innocent?" you can count on hearing plenty of "Well, he must be here for something!"  or "They wouldn't have arrested him for nothing" or "from what I heard, he did it."  There will also be those (most of them) who have read about your case in the newspaper or seen it on TV news.  What many people don't know is that the courts have decided that "the defendant is not entitled to a jury that is entirely ignorant of his case."  What this means is if the potential juror says, "Yes, I read about it (or saw it on TV) but I wont pay attention to that, I'll just use what I hear in court" - that is good enough for the court.
    Once the jury is selected, you will see more clearly how much things are stacked against you.  The jury will normally side at least slightly with the prosecutor.  Remember he is a "crime fighter."  He is "trying to make the streets a safe place" and he is "fighting for the rights of the victims and all of the decent people."
    Your lawyer is a "liar for hire."  He will defend anybody or say anything for the right price.  Many people's opinion of a lawyer can be summed up by this joke, "What do you call it when 50 lawyers go over a cliff in a bus?"  The answer: "A good start!"  When was the last time you heard a prosecutor joke?
    Then comes the testimony from witnesses.  People who started off saying "maybe," "I'm not sure" and "it looks kind of like him."  They are ready now to say, "That's him!  I'll never forget that face!"  As an interesting note,  I know one guy here on death row who was sentenced after one of the witnesses described the assailant as "a little over 6 feet tall."  He is about 5' 5".  There is another one here in whose case a witness saw a white man running away from the scene of the crime.  You guessed it, he is Black.
    "Crime stoppers" in some cases may be used.  The problem with this being crime stoppers sometimes gets used as a sort of payback.  The way that usually works is to give them the name of someone you have a grudge against and say, "he did it."  In the very least  he will be questioned, if he comes anywhere close to the description and can't prove where he was at the time of the crime.  He is going to have problems even though he is innocent.
    Another trick the prosecutor likes to use is to say or ask something inflammatory in front of the jury that he knows is not relevant to the case.  Your lawyer of course will say, "I object!"  The judge will say, "Sustained! Strike that from the record!"  Well, the jury, being human, cannot erase that segment from memory so the prosecutor got what he wanted.
    When the trial is finally at an end especially in a capital case, the newspapers take their parting shot.  Before the sentencing your lawyer will tell you something like, "Whatever the verdict, keep cool" or "No outbursts and keep you expression neutral."  Then you get back out and after the verdict of guilty, you follow his instructions.  That is when the newspapers say, "When the verdict was read, he showed no expression" or "he was emotionless, when the verdict was read."  Just because you follow your lawyer's instructions, they label you as heartless and unfeeling.  After this is over then your only hope is fighting through your appeals but that will have to be another article.

3/16/00

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