10 Most Appalling Failures of the American Justice System This Year
The American criminal justice system is grossly unfair. Here are the worst stories of the year.
Every
year, stories emerge that serve as a reminder that the American system
of justice means injustice for too many, with some receiving little or
no punishment for egregious offenses, while others receive harsh or
faulty punishment for much less. Here are some of the worst injustices
of 2013:
1. An Alabama blogger is still sitting in a jail cell for exercising his First Amendment rights
Blogger
Roger Shuler drew the ire of the powers that be when he continued to
write about the alleged extramarital affair of a prominent lawyer
rumored to be running for Congress. The lawyer and son of former Alabama
governor Bob Riley, Robert Riley, Jr., won a temporary restraining
order that
prohibited Shuler
from writing anything about Riley’s alleged extramarital affair and
other related stories. The order itself was almost certainly a violation
of First Amendment law. But Alabama officials took the dispute a step
further when they pursued him for a traffic stop and
arrested him for contempt. In spite of advocacy from the ACLU and others, Shuler has now been in a
jail cell for two months for his journalism.
2. A teen spent three years in jail without a conviction or trial
Kalief
Browder was a 16-year-old sophomore in high school walking home from a
party in the Bronx when he was arrested on a tip that he robbed someone
three weeks earlier. He was hauled off to Rikers Island, a prison known
for punishing conditions and overuse of force, and was held because he
couldn’t pay the $10,000 bail. Browder went to court on several
occasions, but he was never scheduled for trial. After
33 months in jail,
Browder said a judge offered freedom in exchange for a guilty plea,
threatening that he could face 15 years in jail if convicted. He
refused. Then one day, he was released with no explanation. While
Browder was behind bars, he missed years of his childhood, and is now
aiming to attain his GED. Browder spent a particularly long time behind
bars before his trial, but the practice of holding those charged but not
convicted who cannot afford bail for months is
all-too-common. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the appeal last term of a Louisiana man who
waited seven years behind bars without a trial because the state stalled in appointing him a lawyer.
3. A man who killed an escort for refusing sex was acquitted by a jury
On
Christmas Eve, Ezekiel Gilbert hired escort Lenora Ivie Frago and gave
her $150 as what he believed was a payment for sex. But when she didn’t
deliver that, Gilbert shot her in the neck and she died several months
later from critical injuries. A jury
acquitted Gilbert after
his lawyer argued that he was authorized to use deadly force under a
Texas provision that goes even farther than Florida’s Stand Your Ground
law in authorizing the use of deadly force to “retrieve stolen property
at night.” As in any jury trial, we’ll
never know if
that’s the reasoning the jury accepted when it acquitted Gilbert.
Regardless, he will not face any criminal penalty for the shooting.
4. A wealthy teen used the ‘Affluenza’ defense to skirt jail time for four deaths
After
16-year-old Ethan Couch took an intoxicated ride around town with his
friends that ended with four deaths and several others critically
injured, Couch pleaded guilty to intoxication homicide. But when his
lawyer argued at trial that he was not capable of taking responsible for
his own actions because of a condition known as “affluenza” that
afflicts the very wealthy, the judge
sentenced him to ten years’ probation in a plush Southern California rehabilitation facility, for which his parents would cover the $450,000 per year bill.
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