The next area of reform: Judicial

Courtroom

The next area that we need to reform as a nation is the area of the law and the way justice is served or not served. The natural premise is that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law by a judge or a jury. But with the advent and abundance of the internet today, simply being charged with a crime is enough to ruin someone’s life, guilty or not. Imagine, you went to college and worked hard at your job. Then one day, you were mistakenly identified as a bank robber or of some other horrible crime. You are arrested and news of your arrest and the case are leaked to the media and you are already being vilified through the news and local media for a crime you are not guilty of.  Though you get lucky and have a competent attorney who either convinces a judge and jury of your innocence or the charges get dropped due to lack of evidence. Either way, you will be known as the person charged with the crime.

The justice system has been frequently referred to as a flaw system but the best system available in the world today. I wonder if those that have been arrested for a crime they did not commit or incarcerated for a period of time only to have been proven innocent later would agree. I have always believed that justice is only for those that can afford it. There are too many variables that play into the justice system. First you have a judge who is entrusted by the public to make decisions that will affect their safety and freedoms. If you get a judge that makes decisions based on personal opinion or allows their bias to influence their decision, is justice truly being served. How about the differing levels of an attorney’s skills? Let’s admit it, the showmanship of courtroom practice weighs heavily on jury deliberation. If you can only afford a first year law student to represent your legal interests and he goes up against a 25 law veteran, chances are you are going to lose your case regardless of whether you are innocent or guilty. Doesn’t seem justice is too fair now does it?

Take OJ Simpson for instance. Many in the public felt he was guilty of murdering his ex-wife Nicole. He assembled the greatest dream team of lawyers that successfully gained him an acquittal. Now if OJ is innocent, he is fortunate to have had the funds to even put this legal team together. Had he been your every day normal Joe and not had his fame, would he have been given the same quality level of defense? I think not. On the flip side, what if he did actually commit the murders? Is it fair that just because he had money that he was able to buy his justice?

Justice has never been fair to the public. The judicial system has always used tax payer dollars to prosecute the tax payer for a crime the system believed he committed. Again, I say they believe he committed. The judicial system is set up to reward those attorneys that somehow find a way to bend the law without breaking it in their findings for their client. I am a simple person. I believe if you break the law, you pay the price.But everything must be equal across the board for everyone involved and it is not. If you get arrested for a crime, you must prove your innocent. Unless you have the financial resources to match that of many state and local agencies, your chances of succeeding is greatly decreased. Unless you have friends that are expert forensic scientists, crime scene investigators, law enforcement, judges, attorneys, etc… you have already entered the legal arena severely handicapped.  Now how good do you think your $500/hr attorney will be going up against a law enforcement division that has tax payer resources available at their disposal?

What about being sued by a company or individual and you cannot afford an attorney, much less a crappy one? Take for example the RIAA and their rash of lawsuits against alleged copyright violators. These companies can sue you beyond bankruptcy and most judges and juries are too ignorant to actually weigh the facts and generally side with big business. After all, they filed a lawsuit so they must be telling the truth, right? BUT if you wanted to sue them for price gouging or price fixing, you would have to do it under a class action lawsuit. Let us not forget the abundance of attorneys they have on retainer and the near endless cash supply.

Now consider areas where the law is inconsistent in the way it actually serves justice. In the recent wave of female teacher/student sex, some teachers were forced to lose their certifications and received probation for sexual assault of a minor. But just this week, a male teacher was found guilty of corruption of a minor for a student he did not have sex with and he will serve nine years. It sends the wrong message to the public that the two scenarios are different and in the case of the female teachers, it had to be consensual and therefore she is not totally at fault whereas the male teacher is seen as manipulative and forced a young female to do something she is not ready for.

How about the areas where you do not even know you broke the law until a jury has found you guilty? Part of the reason for punishing offenders is to punish them for having the ability to discern right from wrong and then making a wrong decision in breaking the law. Take Paul Little, aka Max Hardcore, who was found guilty of obscenity for distribution of graphic and extreme pornography that had consenting adults. He is serving more time in prison than Debra LeFave who had sex multiple times with a minor student and even broke her probation by sending the boy sexually suggestive pictures from her camera phone. Does it seem fair that she served no time behind bars for her offense but Little serves time producing video material that is objectionable to prurient tastes?

Obscenity is defined by using the Miller Test.

The Miller test was developed in the 1973 case Miller v. California.^[1] It has three parts:

• Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
• Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions^[2] specifically defined by applicable state law,
• Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. (This is also known as the (S)LAPS test- [Serious] Literary, Artistic, Political, Scientific.)

The work is considered obscene only if all three conditions are satisfied.

Now as a film maker, this scares me. I have seen plenty of movies I have found offensive. One needs to look no further than many of today’s horror films like Hostel or the Saw series to see what we are exposing our children to. But going by the Miller test, there is no way that anyone who produces any content could know what these standards are as they are not decided until a jury gets the case for deliberation. Furthermore, if community standards are the true variable, do you really want someone in Idaho or Montana what you can or cannot watch in California or Florida? As a striking side note, the most vocal state against pornography (Utah) happens to be the number one consumer of such content. This is not an argument for or against pornography but merely an example of how the legal system works.  Shouldn’t we as citizens know exactly what is or is not legal without having to hire an attorney to decipher legal mambo jumbo for us? How can you expect me to obey laws and rules when I don’t have a law degree to understand the context and language the law was written in?

Then we have the differences in laws from state to state. In my opinion, the laws should be pretty much the same. I shouldn’t have to wonder if something that is legal in my home state is illegal elsewhere. The problem is some states like California is pretty much cutting edge when it comes to bizarre laws that allow things to be legal that would be considered illegal in other states (medicinal marijuana and adult film production).

What I find comical is those that have been found guilty upon exiting the prison system say “they have paid their debt to society”. WHAT? HOW? How can someone found guilty of murder or another violent crime that has impacted a victim for the remainder of their life or taken a victim’s life ever pay their debt to society? It’s impossible. Consider a DUI driver who hits an innocent person and ends their life because they chose to get behind the wheel while intoxicated. When their sentence ends, they get to start their life again but the life they have taken is never returned. Or how about the rape or molested victim that continues to deal with their victimization for the rest of their life while their attacker simply trades their freedom for a few years where the victim has to live with their pain?

The problem simply is justice is not fair and equitable to all. While I am hesitant to adopt an “eye for an eye” mentality, one surely has to admit that current deterrents have done little to discourage illegal behavior.