Ferguson and the brokenness of America’s “Justice” System

Good points, but I would argue that civil forfeiture is not only illegal already, it has been unconstitutional from the get go. And since “property is nine tenths of the law”, the fact that CF is so prevalent just proves how little any part of the constitution matters any more.

I agree with everything you wrote, but there needs to be alternatives to the response to the verdict that was handed down in Ferguson. I’m sure that some of the business owners of the businesses and other properties that were destroyed may have disagreed with the verdict also, but nonetheless lost their lifes work or livelihood in the riots. That also goes for the few employees of those small businesses had that lived in the neighborhood, that had just lost a job because of the unrest. What about the homeowners who will NEVER see their property values recover, because the stigma of violence that the town has now. Not to mention the insurance rates, school quality, no company will ever think of opening/moving anything there. The town has started on the path of becoming another Camden, Detroit, or an east St Louis. I fit the demographic that populates Ferguson for many years, but I realized in a community I have a certain responsibility to that community. I wish someone would have tried to talk to some of those young, frustrated, unemployed men and women, violence is bad for business and politics. Appearances matter. They don’t realize, that they may be playing into the very hands that have them frustrated, unemployed, and marginalized. Blind rage doesn’t think, what they’re up against requires THINKING!!! not burning everything down in sight.

there needs to be alternatives to the response to the verdict that was handed down in Ferguson.

The best alternative would be for everyone who was rioting to descend en masse to the police, forcefully restrain those in the way, and then to find the accused and beat him to death. Meanwhile the entire armory of the police station should be appropriated and distributed among the citizenry.

Of course this won’t happen, because the people want desperately to believe that they are not in a war. They are, only this war only has one side that knows it, which is why they consistently win so easily.

I think a more sensible approach to the rioting would be for the group to head en masse to the nearest rich Republican township and loot and riot there. Instead, they shoot themselves in the face. I never could understand why anyone would riot in their own neighborhood. Unless self-destructiveness is more ingrained in people than I thought.

@MartyH – thanks for the tip to Peter Dale Scott. Bookmarked.

@Gee – from what I’ve read, that’s where the police were massed.

I’m reminded of that famous quote (by Martin Niemoller). It’s a different pre-eminent out-group in our time – black people instead of socialists, who don’t really exist in America – but the progression is the same:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

What’s maybe different is that it’s one kind of justice for those who can afford it, and non-justice for everyone else. One set of rules for the elites and another set for everyone else.

MFI.

There you go again misrepresenting the discussion you refused to engage in. I never defended a jury’s consideration of facts not in evidence. I did point out, however, that they do – and even in your ideal British judicial farce. The discussion I attempted to have with you was about the reasonableness of the British silencing of all public discussion of pending cases – so that of course only the government’s position informs the public perception. Pretty much the level that you now see us here in the U.S. reaching where the grand jury process is abused to control the flow of publicly available information that should be presented in a fairly contested public trial.

Of course your criticism of the U.S. system is entirely valid. The pace of the corruption and its broad reach into every nook and cranny of the judicial system has simply accelerated. The criminal justice system has been lost, as you point out, for nearly a generation – 25 years ago there was still a glimmer of hope that it might be saved but no longer. The real battlefield these days is in the civil law, where long-standing concepts of justice are being discarded willy-nilly for the benefit of the rich and powerful.

It is only going to get a lot worse. The police will become ever more militarised, brutal and will confiscate ever more money from ordinary people (you). Little more than a large gang, backed to the hilt by the judicial, national security and political systems.

By and large the US elites are very happy with this outcome. They have spent a heck of a lot of (your) money achieving this, to keep the proles in terror and underfoot.

Look at this little fact:

“Killings by Utah police outpacing gang, drug, child-abuse homicides ”
http://www.sltrib.com/news/1842489-155/killings-by-utah-police-outpacing-gang

This is probably the case for many places in the US now and this trend will get ever greater. If not now, then soon, the single greatest threat to you of theft, death and violence will be from the police, everywhere.

Your only option is (or soon will be) is to ally yourself with some other gang with some clout, to protect yourself for that gang called the police (and the rest of the judicial/national security state). You can’t ally yourself with the police, because their first priority (after looking after themselves) is to protect that system and the elite.

And it is not to change except for the worse. There are no elite ‘champions’ for ordinary people.

But it is hard to express sympathy for white middle class US people in all this. They have been quite happy about this outcome (and usually voted for it) as long as it was directed towards coloured people and the lower working class. Now it is becoming their turn and they are getting all whiny, bit late.

As for ‘liberals’, well the professional ‘liberals’ have worked just as hard as the ‘conservatives’ to achieve all this (if anyone can tell the difference between the two nowadays).

@ hvd November 26, 2014

Nope – you repeatedly said what you said giving as your qualifications jury service and some sort of quasi judicial experience in “certain civil matters”. You then offered to explain what you meant via email if Ian would pass on a mail you wrote to me. Both Ian and I said go ahead and you haven’t in fact ever done so. Don’t bother either because when I said eff off I meant it I’m not even remotely interested in dialogue with somebody who suggests weakening the rights of the accused yet further with the inevitable result that there’d be yet more catastrophic failures of justice. I’d give you an even rougher ride in private than I gave you in public. You have NEVER defended somebody, you have certainly NEVER done so in ANY European jurisdiction. Your comments displayed massive ignorance not only of the law of contempt which is one of the few effective weapons left to lawyers defending people araigned for criminal offenses but also massive ignorance of jury instruction procedures, evidentiary procedures, and the grounds for declaration of mistrial and miscarriage over here but also of those matters in the US. You and people like you bear massive responsibility for the deplorable condition both of American jurisprudence and law enforcement and you then had the sh*t faced effrontery to suggest that other jurisdictions follow suit. Well to hell with that. Things are bad enough over here without us voluntarily sinking to the state in which America finds itself at the behest of American so-called “liberals”. Here’s a really radical suggestion devote some effort to bringing the standard of American jurisprudence up rather than suggesting that everyone else sink to your level.

mfi

mfi: For all the frothing-at-the-mouth Coulterian wailing about “liberal treason” from the right, American liberals seem almost invariably to be first and foremost American exceptionalists.

When some left-wing Canadians tried to find allies against NAFTA provisions on DKos, their concerns were roundly dismissed as smacking of paranoid Bircherism. The very reality of the ferocious American pressure on other Western governments is virtually taboo across the whole U.S. left blogosphere. And don’t try to ask whether American economic warfare is somehow responsible for the flood of migrants out of Mexico–they’ll say that the destruction of Mexico’s economy has thus greatly enriched America’s cultural diversity, and so to oppose it is racist. (Even Dr. Pangloss would run away screaming at that point, I think.)

The moment those rioters would have breached the police station in Ferguson,and carried out street justice, every protest in America from then on would be met with violent repression from the police and other authorities.

Are you kidding? We already have that. OCW had it in spades and they were one of the most self-policing groups in recent protest history, ready to turn over any agitator and offer up their bellies to the wolves. You are already living in your proposed hypothetical situation.

the violent repression that I’m referring to will not have the news media present. In fact that will be a big red flag, no media around to witness the event. They won’t be trying to arrest you.

Ian your naivete is astounding. The system isn’t broken, it works. The drug laws are the problem they are the solution to the old problem we had from the 50s to the 80s, urban crime. The Drug War isn’t about stopping drug use, it is about harsh sentencing for drug crimes which have a correlative relationship to other crime. All those dregs who are arrested would likely have committed other crimes. Instead they spend 30 years in prisons and come out broken old men who promptly die in their Projects flat. It is wiping out the problematic portion of the population. The best correlative relationship between the drop in US crime rates beginning in 1993 and any social policy is that of the drug war and mandatory sentencing. Nobody wants to go back to the old way because the old way didn’t work.

50% of all murder victims in the US have a felony conviction and 90% have a violent arrest record. 80% of all murderers are prior felons and 95% have a violent arrest record. Murder in the US is concentrated in urban areas, with 75% of all murders occurring in 1% of the counties, all invariably urban counties with large minority populations, gun control laws, and democratic mayors and city councils.

For a resident of the US living in a rural area or a city of less than 8,000 inhabitants, which is 72% of the entire population, the chances of getting murdered are equal to that of an average Western European living in a rural area. Those designated as white in the US racial classification system have the same murder rate as native born Western Europeans in their respective nations. And those designated non-Hispanic white account for 72% of the population. So for a white voter living in rural America what incentive is there to trade his low comparable murder rate and much lower crime victimization rate for a European system which has a lower murder rate for all but also a total crime victimization rate which is six times higher? It is not in his interest. Americans fundamentally do not care about urban criminals who are killed by other urban criminals.
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vfluc.pdf
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/vfluc.txt
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fdluc06.pdf

While liberal urbanites, blacks, and hispanics are dying with their sub replacement fertility self identified conservative whites have mantained a birthrate of 2.7 for 7 decades. Of course they want the want the Great Society, Drug War, and current DoJ policy to continue, it is in their interest. And it is only right and proper that they support it.

And as for the economics. Well white americans have 6,000 USD more disposable income on average than whites in Western Europe even when excluding the top 10% of income earners. They have the highest adjusted mean disposable income in the world. That said for urbanites their disposable income is only about 3,000 greater than the nearest white competitors in Western Europe. While the rural whites have nearly 8,000 more disposable income than they do.
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/3010161ec007.pdf?expires=1361821064&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=111DB29091BC3407ECF14955A76F6434

Why would I was a rural white male have a single problem with this system? If anything it is leftists and bleeding hearts pandering to the dregs of society who are working against my interests.

I welcome a ne0-feudal society were genetic nepotism causes capitalists and employees to invest in a company like a clan because they are permitted to openly discriminate again. Discrimination is the key feature of social organization.

@ Lisa FOS November 27, 2014

Some more reading material with apologies to Ian for putting in so many links:

Weapons of the Wealthy: Predatory Regimes and Elite-Led Protests in Central Asia Paperback – August 7, 2012 by Scott Radnitz (Author) — Required reading.

The Post-Soviet Wars: Rebellion, Ethnic Conflict, and Nationhood in the Caucasus Paperback – September 1, 2009 by Christoph Zurcher (Author) — Comparative coverage of: Chechnya, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Dagestan. Strongly recommended.

Ethno-Nationalism, Islam and the State in the Caucasus: Post-Soviet Disorder (Central Asian Studies) Paperback – December 13, 2007 by Moshe Gammer (Editor) — It’s a Routledge brief and edited by the late Moshe Gammer so I was expecting to be disappointed, in fact it’s really rather good.

For Prophet and Tsar Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia Robert D. Crews —
Good historical background for those new to this topic. Provides a much needed counter-balance to the clash of civilisations shite so beloved of Americans.

China|Russia

China, Xinjiang and Central Asia: History, Transition and Crossborder Interaction into the 21st Century (Routledge Contemporary China Series) Hardcover – June 5, 2009 by Colin Mackerras (Editor), Michael Clarke (Editor) — Another surprisingly good Routledge brief. Xinjiang is a flash point in more ways than one well worth keeping an eye on.

China-Russia Relations in Central Asia: Energy Policy, Beijing’s New Assertiveness and 21st Century Geopolitics Paperback – August 31, 2013 by Thomas Stephan Eder (Author) — A Springer brief, so turn on your filters before reading but not bad at all.

All these links are to Amazon.com. All are well worth reading – if you don’t want to buy them and your library or university can’t get them/doesn’t have them Google books probably does.

@ hvd November 26, 2014

As a postscript you were the one making assertions and not providing even a shred of evidence to back your half-assed claptrap up other than your putative experience in a jury and some sort of administrative tribunal role. In response I quoted in detail:

The relevant legislation.

Precedent setting case law from the superior courts and what used to be called the House of Lords and is now called the Supreme Court. As you are plainly ignorant of even the basics of jursiprudential practice I’ll point out to you that the judgements of the superior and Supreme courts are the law of the land and that courts are required to follow the principles and practises laid down in those judgements. Such precedents can only be overturned by the Supreme court for “compelling reasons” and that in the event of them so doing that the Supreme court is required to explain in detail what those “compelling reasons” are.

I also quoted in detail:

Statutory instruments and the rules of both of procedure and of evidence in particular as they relate to jury instruction.

So spare me please the mendacious snivelling about how I “refused to engage in” discussion I did engage in discussion and unfortunately for you I was able to quote both the law and the facts in support of the principle that defendants are entitled to a fair trial and may be convicted only on the basis of evidence.

The fact that you and other American “liberals” at the very least consented to and all too frequently have actively connived at the whoring out of what used to be a reasonably good legal system to the point where American jurisprudence is grossly debased and corrupted does not mean that the rest of the world should follow suit. On the contrary.

mfi

@ Hvd permalink November 28, 2014

I wasn’t going to indulge you anymore but the fact is that everything you write in the post above is simply not true. You engaged in no such discussion then nor do you prove your point now.

Yes I did and during the course of it I pointed out that you were wrong both as to the law and as to facts. You have not even once provided any evidence to back up your ludicrous half-baked idiotic opinions. Not. even. once.

The question then as now is: do British laws restricting public discussion of pending cases protect the rights of the accused or do they leave the state as the arbiters of public opinion and ultimate influencers of the opinions of juries and jurists alike. I understand and understood that a rabid press could strongly influence public opinion and quite possibly jury verdicts. But when the public is silenced who is left in position to influence opinion.

What part of “the accused shall be found guilty on the basis of evidence entered into a court of law and only upon the basis of such evidence” are you too effing dense to understand? I don’t give a damn what opinion piece Ian or anybody else writes. IT’S NOT EVIDENCE. IT’S NOT EVIDENCE PRESENTED AS EVIDENCE DURING A TRIAL AND THEREFORE HAS NO PLACE IN THE JURY ROOM. None.

You were and still are trying to pretend that the law of contempt one of the very very few effective legal remedies left to counsel for the defense is some weapon used by the state. Typical American liberal you don’t give a shit about the rights of the accused to a fair trial because as far as you and your ilk are concerned your right to bloviate outweighs the rights of the accused to be tried on the basis of the evidence and of the law. Of course the fact that defendants are overwhlemingly poor and often not white makes them far less important than some white middle-class American “liberal” writing ignorant claptrap about how great it would be to drag everyobdy else’s legal system down to the despicable level of the American one.

No.

My point in the non discussion that took place previously is that the British policy would silence the rational words Ian wrote in that long ago thread while leaving in place the impressions created in the media by the state in the aftermath of that ghastly crime.

My point was that your point was completely and utterly wrong. As I pointed out at the time have repeated above and repeat yet again the law in question is a weapon used exclusively by counsel for the defense to protect the right of the defendant to a fair trial. There has NEVER been a case where it was used by the prosecution NEVER not even once. Nor would I want to be the idiotic counsel for prosecution who tried it on because word of the savaging that I and far more importantly the DPP received at trying on such a blatant attempt to abuse process would be horribly detrimental to my career. The DPP does not enjoy being hauled into court to explain the actions of counsel and the DPP can and does express that displeasure by removing counsel from the list of barristers qualified to appear for the prosecution.

Frankly I have never understood your vituperation.

Gee then I you’re even harder of comprehension today than you normally are. Your suggestion would be yet another step down into the gutter infested by your legal system. I see no reason why my legal systems should be so prostituted that they wind up like your one. I will continue to attack anyone who suggests it. That’s because I do actually care about the rule of law and I do actually care about the rights of the accused to a fair trial and the rights of the accused to be convicted on the basis of evidence tested in a court of law. As far as I’m concerned those rights are paramount. “Fiat justitia ruat caelum” to quote the legal maxim.

I don’t a curse what you Americans do to one another I’ve long since given up. I do however care deeply when somebody like you tries to drag our legal institutions down to your level. I regard such attempts as profoundly hostile acts and respond accordingly.

By the way Ian accepted the role of middleman but from you there was only crickets.

I said both publicly and privately “go ahead” you did not do so – you are yet again deliberately misstating the facts.

But I like to be fair even to “liberals” like you even when you’re trying to whore out the rights of the defendant to a fair trial. So I’ll publicly challenge you (again). Show me one case just one in either the English and Welsh legal system, the Scottish Legal System, the Ulster legal system, or the Irish legal system, where the law of contempt has been used as you put it “by the state” to silence public discussion. Stop snivelling, drop the mendacity, and get researching. Find me ONE case just one.

We both know you can’t.

EOD

Nope Sterling I’m a republican in the Irish Republican sense of the word and in my more … testy … moments am of the opinion that Cromwell and the French revolutionaries both had the right approach to the condign disposal of monarchs.

“We” in this context means hvd and myself. Hvd has never tried to refute me either using law or the facts because law, facts, and the principle that people are entitled to a fair trial and should only be convicted on the basis of evidence entered and tested during that trial.

When you have the law on your side you yell about the law.
When you have the facts on your side you yell about the facts.
When you have both the law and the facts on your side you yell about both the law and the facts.

I have the law, the facts, and the principle that even loathsome people accused of loathsome crimes are entitled to a fair trial and to be convicted on the basis of the evidence against them and on that basis alone on my side. Hvd has nothing except ignorance and I use that word in every sense of the term.

I do not take kindly to American “liberals” who as a body either connived at the prostitution of the American legal and law enforcement systems or by their inaction consented to and condoned it suggesting that we whore out our legal systems to the degraded, inferior, and trashy level of the American one.

There is not one case not even one in which the legislation in question has been used by the State to silence discussion of a case. Not even one , not even one in any of the jurisdictions I listed. That’s because the enactments in question were written with the intent of helping counsel for defense defend their client. A fact which would be screamingly blatantly apparent to anyone who read the legislation or the judgements I cited.

I do not take kindly to some effing foreign buffoon whose sole experience of jurisprudence has been adjudicating the picayune disputes that arise between dog catchers (or whatever the fuck “certain civil matters” means) attacking the basis upon which a civilised country offers legal protection to those who are most desperately in need of such protection.

I find it quite extraordinary that somebody who claims to have served on an American jury should ignore jury instruction procedures and the fact that a failure in such jury instruction procedures is cause for re-trial on appeal at the very least.

It’s difficult enough defending in the teeth of a sustained onslaught against civil rights and liberties without having some pig-ignorant American “liberal” chiming in on the side of those who would make the job even more difficult.

The fact that you American “liberals” have as a body either actively connived at or stood by and done nothing in the face of the systematic degradation and brutalisation of your legal system by the extremists now running them does not mean that we should follow suit. Your legal and law enforcement systems are a byword for incompetence, brutality, and corruption, while your incarceration systems are so barbaric that words fail me. And then some soi-disant American “liberal” makes suggestions that would undermine the entire basis of the legal protections against arbitary conviction and tyranny by allowing non-evidentiary material into the process and worse pretends that those suggestions are made in the interests of civil liberties and discourse. Well fuck that for a pack of lies.

I do not write for Americans and am not particularly interested in dialogue with them my audience is over here and I reach my audience. I’ve given up on Americans because in my opinion you’re spiralling downwards so far and so fast that you’re not salvagable. I and European conservatives like me reach our audience which when I look at the state of your politics, law, health, education, and economic systems is more than can be said for you American liberals. Instead of making idiotic suggestions about other peoples’ legal systems perhaps hvd and others of that ilk should devote a little effort to mitigating the disastrous effects upon the most vulnerable in America of their complete, utter, abject, and miserable failures. But then that would involve them actually having principles and standing up for them which in a lifetime of dealing with American “liberals” is something I have yet to see. The structural function of the American “liberal” such as hvd is, as I’ve remarked above, to serve as a fig leaf for the American right- and in hvd’s case it would seem as a kite flyer also.

Things are bad enough over here as it is and defending counsel already have an apallingly difficult task. I will attack vigorously any suggestion that would help bring our society and our legal protections down to your level. I will attack vigorously anybody who makes suggestions that we engage in any course of action which would bring our society and our jurisprudence down to your level.

mfi

@ MFI Above

As an American I wish, with all fervor, I could refute your invective’s ; but I cannot.
I just wish with all fervor, the American people could see through my/our eyes: But they cannot!

My point is simply this; some of us understand and have acted accordingly.
But most have not, will not. I do not understand this.
So, carry on and thanks for your input/opinion.
Cheers

@ MarkfromIreland

A reluctant two pence worth of opinion. It would probably be more astutely approached in the manner one manages a person with post initial stages of dementia, one who is aware of there being problems in their ability to cope but not cognizant of the source of their duress and absolutely assured that the world is going off kilter and it is they who remain stable. You are witnessing the early term dementia of a nation, given to a mythology of exceptionalism, profoundly deceived in a self-serving belief of a holy righteousness, answering some imagined call to duty of what can only be one of the lesser gods not having the stature to accommodate others that do not agree with themselves.

I would remind that once this was not the case but as a result of a war entered into upon ideological perceptions (referring to domino theory) in SE Asia, unintended consequences changed the course of history for that nation in that deception and self-deception became the coin of the realm which paid all social fees. You are witness to those results. Unfortunately, complex organizations do not do well under such circumstance, particularly those of extreme mass and inertia as the one your protagonist as an endowed member is demonstrating. Better returns would be had with an approach using greater subtleness than what would be used in otherwise normal human commerce. Great care is necessary to forfend any appearance of either domination or aggression which may trigger anything from obstinacy to obstreperous reaction and subsequent loss of facilities even those of ability to communicate; civility becoming the first victim along this path. Of course, YMMV.

@ Hvd #65882 30 November 2014

I semi-recall that conversation took place early summer – May or June. I don’t recall Ian’s original post, the commentary took its usual tangency from that subject. I do recall you took the position that your right to express an opinion over-rode British laws suppressing, albeit temporarily, such expression IN THE MEDIA, until the trial of the accused was completed. MFI tried to reason with your argument but to no avail. Hence the diatribe above. As an observer, you both were talking AT each other and neither were listening to what the other had to say; so typical of the current level of discourse available these days.

MFI’s contempt for American hubris is well earned, most of the world is on a path that follows such esteem for the hegemon. I would suggest that MFI’s contempt for ‘liberals’ is confounded with a contempt for ‘neoliberal agenda’, shooting at a natural ally because the opponent, the reactionary conservative has outfitted itself with pseudo-liberal camouflage to access power in order to subvert the majority’s will. [See: Corey Robin “The Reactionary Mind, Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin”, ISBN 978-0-19-995911-2 from OUP]. MFI should know by this stage that conservatives do not self correct, that is genetically forbidden that political species, they must rely upon those of liberal minds to undo the mischief they have caused and the conservative is rarely happy about it.

I am trying to recall any organization outside ACLU, SPLC and the Public Defenders which regularly supported defendants in the U.S. Out of the full population, such defenders are rare on the ground and subject to great political scorn. No offense was intended on that score by any remark I made; if offense was taken, you have my sincere apology, it is sometimes hard to separate friend from foe concerning what jurisprudence in that country has become.

tl/dr version: if you outlaw private defenders, the rich will not fund public defenders. They will simply pay off the prosecutor not to bring charges.

Romancing the loan,

The problem as you make clear is that the criminal justice system, from the laws penned by legislatures, to the “justice” meted out by storm trooper police to prosecutors so anxious to make career points to judges so inherently biased that they make mfi’s ideal of a trial based on the facts in evidence simply laughable. Sadly public defenders have little opportunity to actually defend. For the most part you guys are just part of the sausage factory making sure that the underclass stays in their place.

Sadly too I am beginning to feel that all of us who are connected in some way to the American system of justice and who may have believed in its potential to do good, should be starting to feel much the same as those who had once worked in the German justice system must have felt in the 30’s. That whatever role you play and however good your intentions we are all just bit players in a horrendous tragedy and simply serve to keep that tragedy moving forward to its inevitable unholy end.