The American Justice System is broken.
It isn't like it has ever been perfect, but after a couple of hundred years it seems like it would have improved much more.
In fact too often there is no justice involved at all.
Since Justice is blind , then it does not notice that there are problems that occur which are direct violations of the constitution.
What kind of violations you ask. Well I am glad you asked, let me tell you.
Crimes against American Indians are almost completely ignored all together.
Unless Tribes have given jurisdiction to states,then states don't have jurisdiction over crimes which occur on Tribal Land.
Crimes against Tribal members which occur off of Tribal Lands are of little interest to most local authorities.
Improvements in laws concerning crimes against Indians have improved very little since it was outright legal to kill Indians.
It is hard for some people to perceive that if someone got into a disagreement with an Indian and decided to kill the Indian they were not breaking the law.
Before you jump in and talk about old history, we are talking about laws that only were changed as late as the 1960s.
Federal agencies are not much better. In fact it's so bad that the only law enforcement agency in the United States that is immune from prosecution for police misconduct, is Bureau of Indian Affairs Police.
18 USC 242 houses police misconduct provisions but specifically excludes BIA Police. Why?
I have heard a lot of answers to that question but I have never heard one that makes sense.
Well sadly the criminal justice system isn't just broken when it comes to American Indians.
If you are a minority person of any minority or a poor person, you can expect to get as little justice as possible from this system.
Supposedly, you are innocent until proven guilty. If you believe that, you should get your affairs in order. You are probably going to find a new home in the penal system if you are accused of a crime.
If someone can hire an attorney and has the funds to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for criminal defense, they may have a chance.
Otherwise, you will receive all the Justice you can afford.
Supposedly this system was designed so that 10 guilty people would walk free before one innocent person would be imprisoned.
Good luck with that. The burden of proof is supposedly on the state.
That should mean that if you didn't commit a crime you can't possibly be convicted.
Since 1986, 359 people have been exonerated through DNA evidence.
There is no way to determine how many innocent people could not be exonerated because there was no DNA evidence.
The point is, innocent people go to prison every single day.
We have forgotten what evidence beyond a reasonable doubt means or how it should be applied.
It should not start at the trial it should start during the investigation.
If there is not evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, then an arrest should not be made.
Does this mean that some criminals will get away with crimes? It certainly does. The next question is simple. Which has the most detrimental effect on the most people, an innocent person going to prison or a criminal walking free?
It boils down to a political question.
Can people get elected if they let one guilty person walk free even though they may have kept 10 innocent people from going to prison? Sadly probably not
So, politics corrupts justice.
Once corruption has it's foot in the door, you can't shut the door. The influx of other kinds of corruption infiltrates the CJS at this point until there is no semblance of justice left. That is where we are currently.
We have to decide what we want. We can't have it both ways.
Either we insure that innocent people can't be convicted, or we prosecute based on who we like for a crime.
