America's Justice System Part 2

A continuation of this post, American's Justice System.

I posted only 7 posts in February compared to the 10 in January. I'll try to post more, but I can't promise too much.

One quick update. I talked about the Olympics awhile ago, and I just read an article that stated that in the 2012 Olympics, British police will have the power to enter homes and seize posters, and will be able to stop people from carrying non-sponsor items to sporting events. I think it goes without saying that any event that results in the stripping of civil rights and freedom of speech, should be re-examined.

Tonight I'd like to talk about several different things because I've been accumulating stories to share (that's how I come up with a topic).

At the risk of being too scattered I'll be talking about Justice. I'm actually very scattered so I'm going to refrain from delivering too much commentary and just give you story after story.

In order to gather enough evidence against some prostitutes. In Seattle, undercover officers spent $16,835 of tax payers money to buy more than 130 lap dances. During this gathering of evidence, no arrests were made. Now the authorities have started to prosecute the clubs where these officers visited.

In Gastonia, North Carolina. A homeless man held up a sign reading "I'm thinking of cheeseburger". He was arrested. given a misdemeanor criminal citation for violating a city ordinance and jailed. In this town it's illegal for people to beg or offer to work for compensation by "accosting one another or forcing oneself upon the company of another".

In 2001 in Prentiss, Mississippi, Cory Maye's apartment was broken into. Maye, suspecting burglars immediately rushed into his child's room, and while protecting his child, shot three shots towards those entering. The "burglar's" were in fact, actually, the police. The police mistakenly had entered the apartment adjacent to another apartment they had obtained a warrant for. Maye testified that he never heard the police yell or knock, and the police's testimonies do not agree. Unfortunately for Maye, one of his shots killed one of the police breaking into the apartment. As a result he was arrested and charged with murder of a police officer. He pleaded not guilty and self-defense. The jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to death. A judge has since reduced his sentence to life imprisonment, but the injustice is still apparent. The police officer who died was the son of the chief of police and the public defendant did such a horrible job that she was fired by the family. The subsequent public defendant was told by the town hall not to take the case and ended up losing his job after he did. In 2009, Maye's appeal in the Mississippi Court of Appeals has ordered a new trial.

In Minneapolis, Minnesota one family was much luckier. They were awarded $600,000 by the city after a SWAT team broke into the wrong house. The father immediately went to protect his family, thinking they were criminal intruders. Protecting his 3 and 15 year old kids he shot several shots and then got away. No one was hurt despite the SWEAT team firing at least 22 rounds at the family.

During the recent March 4 marches done by a lot of californian students (who were demanding cheaper tuitions and more money to the education system) one op-ed made a noteworthy comparison:

"It costs an estimated $1 million to deploy a soldier to Afghanistan for a year and $49,000 to incarcerate a prisoner for a year in California. The state of California spends less than $10,000 to educate one K-12 student each year. The tradeoff is clear and unjustifiable."

According to the NY Times, 1 in 100 U.S. adults are behind bars. 1 in 30 males aged between 20-34 are in jail, 1 in 9 if they are black. In video on youtube I learned that that there are more 17-18 year old black males in jail than there are in college. In 2000, the BBC reported that 25% of the world's prisoners are kept in American prisons (that's a 10 year old statistic that I believe has remained the same, at least according to wikipedia) even though we make up only 5% of the world's population.

My closing words are this: our justice is not justice. It is a cruelly applied poisonous bandaid that fails to treat the heart disease and brain tumors that trouble our brothers and sisters.