Oh, might I suggest you READ my links to see if they have suggestions and make mention of experiments concerning line-up procedures? Because , having read them myself, I can assure you that they DO.

I don’t know what your gibberish is all about. My links speak for themselves.

I suggest you grow up and avoid the name-calling in the future. At least I think that Richard Saunders can give me an argument, and provide links to do so. Tom, might I suggest remedial schooling?

You asked for links, I gave you links. How is that not responding to direct questions? I think Sir, you are of the persuasion that if you tell a big enough lie perhaps people will believe it.

You eagerly use the Alinsky personalizing tactic: I am “lazy”; we are “Benthamites.” You allege I/we said and/or feel things for which you have no factual basis. You do not respond to direct, clear questions.

I have not called you stupid, biased, closed-minded, though that you may be.
You are a fraud, sir. Stay in StenyHoyerland, where you belong.

I’m in far greater danger from both recidavist criminals and police bad apples than either of you two, and yet I’m not the one with my knees shaking worried about how the criminal justice system isn’t “Judge Dredd” enough.

Richard Saunders lives in a world, it seems, where every defendant has on OJ lawyer, and where the only abuses of process happen on the defense side of the aisle. He’d be well advised to talk to this guy :

http://williamlanderson.blogspot.com/2011/01/roger-roots-on-federal-rules-of.html

… though of course moving the Federal rules -or something very much like them- to the states is what many people like Richard think they want. When it is later used against them or theirs they might rethink this.
There’s also Paul Craig Roberts:

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/independent_review.htm

A quote: “Blackstone conceived of law as the people’s shield. It is better, he said, for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be convicted. In contrast, Bentham viewed the law as a weapon the government wields to punish criminals or anyone else in the name of the greatest good for the greatest number. He believed in rounding up people who might commit crimes. He wanted to restore torture to aid in securing convictions, and he believed that a defendant’s lawyer had an obligation to aid the prosecution.”
Seems you guys are Benthamnites.

As for Tom he wants me to link to some more evidence about eyewitness ID and photo lineups. I think this is laziness on his part, but I will do so:

http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr06/eyewitness.aspx
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0206/p01s02-usju.html
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/journals/258/police-lineups.html

I’m not even going to bother to get into some of the silliness involving plea bargains. That innocent defendents are often coerced to take a plea by piling on ridiculous hard to disprove charges and lots of potential jail time is a well-known fact and often comes up when one looks into an exoneration case. More to the point, the fact is the system RUNS on plea bargains! We have so many minor offenses that our overburdened justice system can’t keep up with them, thus many repeat offenders getting off with little or no punishment , while, ironically, someone who doesn’t take a plea might end up for a few years in the slammer for a first time offense.

There’s tons of reforms needed for our justice system on both the prosecution and the defense side of things, but heck, I’d say if they could only properly focus their resources on the real bad guys it would do a heck of a lot of addressing your complaints without making the US into a police state with kangaroo courts.

And the criminal justice system is an assembly line? It sure is! 150 strung-out or stoned slobs, supported by the ADA and the PD standing on either side, pleading guilty to lesser charges. And that’s only the morning docket! Been there, done that.

The only real trials are of the successful crimninals — they’re the only ones who can afford real lawyers.
And those are nothing more than Trials by Combat, except instead of knights as champions, the principals have lawyers.

Ask a criminal lawyer, either a Public Defender or a private lawyer, how many of his or her clients are actually innocent. He’ll laugh in your face. So what is the job of the defense lawyer? To try to get as much evidence as possible surpressed, and if she can’t suceed in getting it suppressed, to mislead and misdirect the jury, just like your hero Barry Sheck did in the OJ case.

And the best part? If the prosecution does succeed in convicting somebody, we send them to prison, where they learn to be better criminals! What a great system!

So, 10 violent criminals go free to prevent 1 innocent man from going to jail. And they commit more crimes?* Well, too bad. Can’t make an omelet without breaking some eegs, right, Brad?

*”Two-thirds of former state prisoners arrested for serious new crimes.” Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1134

You fear incarcerating the innocent. I do too. But it remains that we here are innocent until proven guilty, which is not true in some other Western countries.
I am troubled by the suffering inflicted by the bad guys who get to walk, but you seem to shrug that off. Maybe you need to be mugged by reality.

Fortunately we both believe in our 2nd Amendment right to carry. I’m not sure you can do that in Baltimore as freely as I can here.

And I’m worried about the social costs of imprisoning innocent people and having even more people lose faith in our justice system.

At least I’m consistent in that I think a well-armed citizenry is a good defense against crime.

As for whether I have better ideas in mind : why yes, yes I do. Indeed as an example, scientific based changes of line up procedures have been slowly implemented nationwide over the past 10 years, it’s only too bad that such things aren’t truly universal and that they really don’t help those convicted before the changes took affect.

As for hypothetical damages from a few recidavist bad apples, I’m rather sure that a properly applied system of escalating penalties including and up to the death penalty would take care of that, rather than throwing innocent people into jail to satisfy your fear and/or bloodlust.

As to your “5-10% of cops are corrupt” theme, Brad, that may be true, but corruption is usually motivated by financial greed, and my guess is that a boosted arrest record usually will fall short of that goal. What % of your co-workers do you estimate are petty thieves at work? What is the true rate of felonious workplace embezzlement, do you think?
My point is that all human endeavors are done by flawed, non-omniscient humans, so errors by whatever motive are inevitable. My 2nd point is that only juries convict. That’s the best we’ve got. Do you have a less imperfect process in mind?
Richard and I are concerned about the social costs of letting the violent escape incarceration. You know, the rapist who rapes again, the armed robber who practices his livelihood. Do you share that concern, Brad?

Your idea of a “justice” system is more like a prosecution assembly line. One can run into examples of such a system in Texas as we currently speak – and eventually (to my sadness as I support the death penalty) it may bring about the end of the death penalty in that state because the state refuses to correct glaring errors.

Only 3 percent of what crimes are you talking about? I’m all for the legalization of *some* drugs and prostitution. I’m mostly not a fan of victimless crimes. I’m all for hard jail times for violent people.

Evidence of guilt? When many of the people in prison were convicted in part on tainted (jail house *snitch*) or mistaken eye witness testimony? More to the point DNA testing not only helps exonerate those who didn’t commit some crimes (particularly crimes of the sexual variety) but convict those who did, so it would be in the interests of everyone who gave a crap about justice to get more money into testing DNA. Nonetheless, many crimes honestly have little or no evidence besides the testimony of one person or the other so I’m afraid there won’t be the tons of evidence of guilt you are looking for. Indeed, if you’ve ever followed criminal law you’d notice that just about every legislative change involving criminal law over the past 40 years (with the exception of racial profiling legislation) has made it easier to convict people, not harder. That’s not in the american tradition.

I mistrust law enforcement and think about 5 or ten percent of the cops are downright corrupt. I also live in Baltimore city. Obviously, I must be black and a democrat, right?

Wrong. White and independent. And I support a presumption that an ordinary citizen should be able to carry around a firearm for self-protection. What I do not support is having the government try to guarantee my safety at the expense of either my liberties or any concern about my actual innocence.

I stand corrected about the Innocence Project — in
their 265 exonerations there was evidence of innocence. There are many other such exonerations which have been based on trial erroirs, not on whether the accused actually committed the crime.

Where do you stand on the fact that only 3% of crimes result in more than 6 months incarceration? Where do you stand on a “justice system” which is more of an assembly line on the one hand, and a contest to see who has a better lawyer on the other?

Your answer gives you away — “there’s a tremendous backlog of old DNA evidence that remains to be tested for evidence of innocence.”

How about for evidence of guilt, Brad? You call it justice when all your concern is for the accused,
and none for the victim? You’re right about one thing — we certainly have a different idea aboiut how a “justice system” should work!