@glitterbag,
So then we agree that simply because someone has been found guilty and sentenced to jail they are not necessarily deserving of the verdict and sentence. The justice system in this country "works" in the sense that far more results are just than unjust and no system will ever be perfect, but there are far too many miscarriages of justice for us to base an argument solely on the fact that a defendant was found guilty, or to dismiss out of hand reasonable concerns that a defendant was railroaded.
The lopsided power of the government as respects an individual is rarely as clearly demonstrated as in litigation or a criminal proceeding.
It is why I am against the death penalty. I don't have a moral problem with it. If someone is truly guilty of murder, I think they have forfeited the right to live. They have stolen from someone their greatest possession: everything they ever were and everything they will ever be. The harm they cause the victim's loved ones cannot be measured in dollars and cents or years of a person's life. Their own death seems, to me, to be the most just punishment for such a crime.
However, I do not want the State to ever have the power of life and death over its citizens. Too many mistakes are made, too often power is abused. Death is final and even if the mistake is discovered or the corruption is revealed, it will do little by way of rectifying the unjust punishment inflicted on the innocent defendant.
Fortunately neither I nor any of my friends or family have ever been the victims of unjust prosecution, but those I care about have had nightmarish experiences with a government that has been at least mistaken and very likely abusive. The imbalance of power and resources is staggering and David doesn't always triumph over Goliath; the righteous little guy doesn't always win in the end, as he does in the movies.
When this happens in criminal proceedings it is devastating, even if capital punishment is not a possibility. Often the defendant, after bankrupting his family with defense costs is forced (despite knowing he or she is innocent) to plead guilty to a lesser charge rather than risk the chance of spending the rest of his or her youth or life in jail. For the poor who cannot afford one of the few attorneys capable of beating back the beast, it is too often the case that they are crushed by it. It is a huge mistake to assume that if someone gets in trouble with the government that it must somehow be their fault. Most often it probably is, but it is not enough times to make any such assumption unreasonable.
Of course there are honorable and honest prosecutors just as there are well intentioned and reasonable bureaucrats, but the lack of real accountability in addition to the corrupting influence of power and the connection between "winning" (whether in a courtroom a hearing or an audit/review) and career success is so prevalent and pronounced that many are either led astray or allowed to follow base instincts.
Until one actually experiences or witnesses firsthand how ultimately powerless one is before a determined government, the dangers an invasive and largely unaccountable ruling power can be are not truly realized, only imagined.
Most Americans are raised to believe the System works, that justice will prevail and that good will ultimately triumph over evil. They want very much to believe this and most often it is precisely the case, but there is a significant difference between maintaining a reasonable view based on facts and outcomes that are repeated over decades, and blindly placing one's full trust in institutions that regardless of their creeds, are operated and controlled by imperfect humans.
It's not a dynamic that is limited to government. Any large institution where the conditions previously described exist are capable of abuse and terrible outcomes. The sexual abuse scandals in the US Catholic Church are an excellent example. I was involved on the defense side of a number of the suits that were filed against the Church in the 80's and what we discovered through our investigation and through the legal discovery process was literally sickening. Fortunately I was neither a Catholic nor Christian when I was exposed to the facts behind these cases and so I didn't face the crisis of faith that devastated several of my colleagues, but while I had had what I considered a healthy skepticism about the way the Church was run, and their sanctimonious pronouncements about everyone else's morality, I always thought that at its core the Church was a benign institution. Those cases thoroughly shook that belief and while I don't believe the Church was ever (not even then) some sort of utterly corrupt organization with depraved rather than righteous goals, it was made very clear to me that under the right circumstances even people with fundamentally good intent can not only allow evil to happen, but can facilitate it. The government isn't filled with evil people either, but the bigger it gets the greater chance there is that these things will happen and the greater their impact will be. It really is like some great powerful beast. If kept under tight control and held back with strong reins it can provide valuable utility and positive results, but left to run wild, it can and will do great harm . It can't be trusted to look out for us all and it shouldn't be.
