All the legal justice your money can buy

Scan page 7

YOU MAY REMAIN SILENT IF YOU DO WE WILL BEAT A CONFESSION OUT OF YOU WITH RUBBER HOSES. YOU MAY SCREAM FOR AN ATTORNEY. BUT THIS WILL GO AGAINST YOU IN COURT...

Socialist Action Forumis SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1987 7 Law and Disorder by Bruce Jackson. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1984. 324 pages.

The figure of the Blind Goddess of Justice with her evenly balanced scales stands atop many older courthouses across America. Frequently, the slogan "equal justice under the law" is chiseled over the doorway. All this would suggest that ascertaining the truth and rendering just verdicts is the chief business of those inside.

"Not so!" says Bruce Jackson, author of "Law and Disorder," a critique of America's justice system. A more appropriate slogan might be, "all the justice your money can buy." He buttresses his argument by taking us on a journey with a defendant through the system from the moment of arrest to ultimate parole.

Jackson's thesis is that all the elements of the justice system-the police, the district attorney, the public defender, and the judge-are linked together in a bureaucracy that has one overriding goal. That is, to move the cases as expeditiously as possible through the system.

As Jackson puts it, "Justice is not a basic concern of very many people in the criminal-justice system. Getting through the work load is what exhausts the imagination and consumes the days. Justice is an expensive luxury, it is time consuming."

Innocent people arrested

The citizen enters the justice system at the point of arrest. According to Jackson, the police are motivated to build a good arrest record. Bring in as many criminals and violators as possible: see later if the charges will hold up in court.

The result is that thousands of innocent people have to endure the humiliation of arrest only to have the charges dropped before their case comes to trial.

Jackson cites an example, "In New York in 1969, there were 2096 arrests for felonious gambling...which led to 281 indictments, 15 convictions, and one jail term." The nearly 2000 innocent citizens who were arrested and released got no compensation for their ordeal.

The police will deliver to the district attorney those cases they believe will result in convictions. The most sure-fire road to a conviction is to obtain a confession. Despite the advice of fictional movie lawyers to "never plead guilty," Jackson says, "About 90 percent of all guilty verdicts result from guilty pleas, not trials."

What leads such a large number of accused to plead guilty? Jackson points to some quite compelling reasons.

The accused risks a heavier sentence if he pleads innocent. One survey revealed that those pleading guilty in certain marijuana cases in New York received average MEESE&C ATTORNEYS CENTRAL S THESE HER!

UNTED STATES ALL THIs TICKET? sentences of less than six months, while those going on trial received sentences eight times as severe-four to five years in prison. The right to be presumed innocent can carry a heavy price.

"Plea bargaining"

The Justice Department has an even more potent lever for extracting guilty pleas, says Jackson. This is the process of plea bargaining. The defendant who has been charged with a serious offense is persuaded to plead guilty to a lesser charge carrying a lesser penalty.

The district attorney may admit this process thwarts true justice, but to him it is more important to move the backlog of cases along. Too many lengthy court cases clog up the system.

The bail system exerts enormous pressure on a poor defendant to "cop a plea." It costs money to get out on bail. Here Jackson points out how rich and poor defendants fare very differently.

If bail is set at $10,000, the wealthy person can usually post some sort of property bond and get it back after the trial. The poor person must go to a bail bondsman, who will charge $1000, which will never be returned.

Unable to afford bail, the poor defendant must sit in jail, sometimes for months. Although legally presumed innocent, he is treated the same as any convicted prisoner.

The public defender The indigent defendant cannot afford the legal defense the rich person can. He is assigned a public defender who is paid by the state and is part of the courthouse bureaucracy. Getting a defendant acquitted is an ideal for the public defender, but speeding cases through the courts is a more immediate aim.

The public defender serves, actually, as a mediator between the court and the prisoner. Most public defenders assume their clients are guilty. "If he's not guilty of this one, he is guilty of one just like it," one public defender told Jackson.

They see their job as getting the lightest sentence possible for the defendants. A guilty plea to the smallest charge the district attorney will accept is the easiest way to go.

This contradicts the popular impression of a jury deliberating the fate of a fellow citizen. In 1981, only 12 out of 100 federal cases were decided by a jury. Over 24,000 out of 38,000 were settled by guilty pleas.

A plea bargain promises a defendant a smaller penalty, but the judge has the final say. There can be no appeal against a harsh sentence if it is within the law. Harsh sentences, however, are reserved for the poor rather than the rich, Jackson says.

White-collar and corporate crime costs the public more money than all the muggers on our city streets. But swindlers who appear in three-piece suits, with highpriced lawyers by their side, can usually persuade judges to be lenient. Almost no corporate executive has ever seen the inside of a jail.

After conviction, a paid lawyer will take the client's case through as many stages of appeal as money will pay for.

The poor person cannot afford this luxury. He or she goes off to prison with only the hope that a lenient parole board will shorten the time left to serve. This is a body of appointed citizens who determine how much of his sentence the prisoner must serve.

The parole board In theory, the parole board considers whether the prisoner has been rehabilitated by his experience in prison. Actually, Jackson says, few prison officials today even claim to rehabilitate their inmates.

The parole board can only guess whether a prisoner will now become "a productive member of society." Here the cards are stacked against the prisoner who comes from a broken home, is poorly educated, and has no job skills. The middle-class prisoner, from a "good family," who is assured of a job in his uncle's business will get out sooner.

Finally out on parole, the ex-prisoner must live under the rules of the parole board. The board decides how lenient these rules may be. For violating any regulation, the parolee can be sent back to prison to serve the remainder of his term. He might have two or three years left.

This means, Jackson points out, a parolee may be sent to prison for three years for just taking a drink or for being out of his house at night—a savage sentence for a minor violation. At the hearing to revoke parole, the accused has none of the rights guaranteed in a court trial—no lawyer, no process of appeal.

Do long sentences deter crime?

While demonstrating the inequity built into the American justice system, Jackson acknowledges the public concern with crime. Politicians react to public alarm, he says, by demanding ever longer sentences. One man was recently sentenced to 1086 years!

Jackson says attacking crime through longer sentences is like "a car manufacturer responding to concerns about safety by improving the rust resistance of hubcaps."

Jackson gets near the heart of the problem when he says, "The roots of crime lie almost entirely beyond the areas of activity of any justice agency...Much crime can be obliterated by abolishing the conditions that make it necessary or reasonable."

Socialists can join Jackson in that approach to the problem. His book offers a valuable insight into a problem that will only be solved by ending the system of exploitation that drives so many to despair and crime.

New York: "Election '88: Which Way Forward for Working People" Speakers: Irving Beinen, exec cttee. NCIPA & Nat Weinstein, co-Nat'l Secy Socialist Action Friday, Nov. 6, 7:30 p.m.

South Loeb Stud. Ctr. N.Y.U.

San Francisco: "Stock Market Crash: Workers Will Pay"

Speakers to be announced Friday, Nov. 13, 8 p.m. 3435 Army St., Room 308 For more info, call 821-045