Monday, June 25, 2007

just compensation for unjust imprisonment


questions about our evolving legal system...

what does the state owe for it's mistakes? what about culpability of the prosecuters? what about incompetent defense lawyers? is disbarment enough? payments are being made, so where is the accountability for us taxpayers? and if there is compensation, where does it end?
should we punish juries that get it wrong?

How do they figure the payouts for people who were wrongly convicted?

sorry, I've only got questions on this one. I know it's a half-baked post but I wanted to put something here for my thirsty readers.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The states should have laws regarding this because they get it wrong. It should be mandated.

Of course you can't punish juries for doing their civic duty. only with a volunteer jury system would that even be close to a possibility.

cathouse teri said...

I don't know the deal with the legal system. It's about as unjust as justice can get.

You live in SoCal and I don't know you? What's up with that?

Anonymous said...

No way should juries be punished, But bad defense attorneys should be punished. Hey, that's what you do fresh out of law school, become a public defender. The scourge of the earth. I wouldn't want that job for anything. I have no answers about the legal system, only snarky opinions

tomawesome said...

cooper: "there oughta be a law..." is true, but the thinking that goes into formulating the policy is what I find more interestin'. btw, I think the jury punishment story was satire. I got taken off a jury panel not too long ago (my intention) because I stated that given my beliefs about current drug laws I could not guarantee that I would be able to suppress my activist urge to judge based on my beliefs and not the jury iinstructions.

teri: we may get to know each other more now. I'm mostly undiscovered, so you must be on the cutting edge... or just unlucky to have encountered this pretentious bore :) anyway, there's no doubt that a lot of injustice occurs but that is not the intention of the system. making things better overall is the challenge.

ba doozie: good point - how much expertise can we really expect? there always will be that bell curve of performance. but when egregious errors occur (such as Nifong in the Duke rape case) there have to be consequences.