I was talking with a guy who works in our fabrication shop the other day and he was telling me how he and his wife were put in jail for a year because of an accusation made by someone who lived in another state. The accusation was that he and his wife were involved in sexual abuse against their children, or that they had the knowledge of it without doing anything about it. He told me that after being in jail for one year, they were released with paperwork which stated that there was no evidence supporting these accusations.
During that year, he lost his job with our facility of course, which had several consequences even though he was rehired after a review of his case information by several supervisors. First, he lost his seniority. As a result of that, he lost his vacation time, along with other benefits he would have had by being employed with the company for more than five consecutive years.
I found myself outraged after listening to his story. I had heard bits and pieces of it from other employees, but never from the man himself until the other day. Most of what I had heard up until that point was only gossip and speculation, all of which holds no meaning to me after speaking directly with him about the facts of the whole ordeal, which I regret to say has completely fouled up my respect of our justice system and how it works in this day and age.
What is worse is that the very next morning when I got up for work, my wife was watching the news and there just happened to be a similar case of wrongful incarceration in the headlines. It seems that a young woman who was married to a U.S. Marine was accused and convicted of his murder and sentenced to prison. She had already served some years for the crime when, by the grace of God, she was proven innocent and released. It turns out that her husband died of natural causes and not by arsenic as originally suspected. There was some sort of foul-up at the lab where the soldier’s tissue samples were tested, those samples were mishandled in some way and contaminated. Not only that, but it was stated in that news reel that the prosecutors likely had some type of awareness of at least the possibility of the woman’s innocence and they still relentlessly fought for her conviction in an American court of law.
My question to all of those directly involved in our justice system every day, such as lawyers, judges, police officers, public defenders, and prosecutors, as well as any and all others involved is this; At what point does handling, or rather mishandling the civil liberties and rights of American citizens become worthy, by law, of being labeled itself as a crime? How do we prevent this sort of thing from happening to other innocent people who don’t deserve to be punished, to be caged up like animals and forced to live in a 6’ x 6’ or 8’ x 8’ room for months, or years, and subjected to the relentless torture of knowing their own innocence and having that truth fall on the deaf ears of both loved ones and complete strangers alike.
I can suggest a couple of ways in which we might at least start to correct the problems with the system. First, in order to be able to make a decision to place someone in jail, the person making the decision should have been required themselves to spend two or more weeks in jail, and not under any special conditions, but exactly as the conditions would be for any convicted offender. Two weeks would be more than enough to make someone really consider if what that person is being accused of is worth being locked up over. It would also make people really feel the need to find the truth because after knowing what it is like, you wouldn’t want to put someone in that situation unless you were, pardon the language, damn certain that they were guilty.
Next, it should be punishable by a sentence equivalent to that of time served for wrongful conviction of an innocent person for any or all persons involved in the wrongful conviction. This should be on the minds of those charged with the unfortunate task of convicting people of crimes, at least during the process of making their decisions. It is far too easy for people to take for granted their freedoms and liberties when it isn’t theirs which are in jeopardy of being taken away. If there were repercussions for making incorrect decisions, then greater care or the greatest possible care rather, would be taken in the matters of making these decisions. I don’t feel that this is asking too much because after all, how often is someone who has been incarcerated later found innocent? This doesn’t happen often now, but it would happen far less if these conditions were placed on the process, because most people, especially U.S. citizens, don’t like the idea of having their freedom and civil liberties taken away from them.
I read in an article in the newspaper not very long ago that our country has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world. It was claimed in that article that 1 out of every 100 U.S. citizens or residents is incarcerated, or was at the time of the writing of the article. That story was stated to be an Associated Press article. To me, that is a ridiculous amount of people to be in jail in a country with hundreds of millions of people living within its borders. It also tells me that if just one person is found to be innocent after serving time, then it is highly unlikely that there are no other innocent people behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit. However, there has been more than just one person cleared of wrong-doing after spending time behind bars, and in the course of one year as well, I’m sure.
I want to know what steps have been taken to address this issue though. What steps have been taken in the entire course of the development of our justice system up to the current date to ensure that innocent people are not imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit? Is this something which is continually strived toward by those who develop the system? Is this a concern on the minds of all involved in the system on a daily basis? Is this a concern of every free citizen in this country even if the odds of it happening to you are phenomenal? Are the odds phenomenal? If so, will they always be? Should we all be concerned?
_800x326.jpg)
