What’s Wrong With our Court System?
I found these comments and began to study the judicial system to see where it had gone astray, so that an almost harmless criminal might find himself on death row, and I have to say, the guys who designed this did a pretty bang-up job. The courts are simple, and yet very productive, and amazingly easy to understand for a U.S. system. And they seem to be almost as fair as they can be.
Notice that I used the word almost, because one of the biggest parts of criminal law is extremely screwed up. The problem is juries, or more specifically, the selection of jurors. One of the inside tricks that lawyers use for selecting favorable jurors is to pick those that are stupid, don’t pay attention to the news, and don’t understand law. Jurors like that are easy to persuade and manipulate, so the lawyers don’t really have to use evidence to convict, just a good skill at debate. These morons that are mostly picked for jury duty have unintentionally ruined the courts and are the reason that cases like the Scooter Libby case are such circuses.
I don’t know, maybe the Courts should replace the conventional jury with some sort of series of lawyers and judges, or maybe even give free, mandatory, classes on law to jurors so that they at least know about different statutes, laws, and restrictions that might come up in their case.
