Does the criminal justice system in the US work?

Let_Justice_Prevail

Well, for the most part the system does work when everybody does his job correctly. However when prosecutors lie and hide evidence, innocent people get convicted. When police lie and illegally force confessions, innocent people get convicted. When defense attorneys don't investigate and prepare for trial (or sleep in trial), innocent people get convicted. When judges do not follow the law, innocent people get hurt.
Yes the system can break down and has broken down many times, as evidenced by the hundreds of stories that you see on TV and read about in the paper. I believe in the system and it does work when all the players do their job. Although I think the person who answered that the prosecutors have small budgets is severely out of touch with reality. I have personally witnessed the federal government spend $5 million to investigate and prosecute a lawyer for tax evasion for 5 years, only to have him found not guilty by a jury and then he sued the government and won over $1 million in a settlement. That lawyer had to mortgage his house and run up his credit cards over $750,000 to pay for his defense.
When the system places principles over personalities, it works.
How can it be fixed? Well, that remains to be seen. In Texas, new laws have been introduced to try to protect the accused from wrongful convictions---laws requiring jailhouse informant testimony to be corroborated; laws requiring police to video/audio tape confessions so to ensure confessions will not be coerced; laws requiring eyewitness testimony be more reliable (see http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/ ).
Does mass warehousing people for the crimes they commit the best way to protect the public? That is a different question altogether so I won't address it.
My answer in short is: Yes the system works most of the time but when it doesn't, it's because one of the players didn't do their job. The problems can be fixed, for now, after the fact. Can we prevent errors in the future? Only by careful analysis of the problems and realistic approaches to there prevention.

Rebbecca

I think the way it was first designed works, but the way it's actually run now is a failure. I'm only thirteen- I wouldn't be able to provide any good suggestions on how to fix it. :P

Wherever you go, there you are

Only if your rich and white

alex b

No. There's three reasons; liberals think everyone is good and can be rehabilitated, which means regular people like us just pay to house and feed criminals(prisons).

On top of that, most of the judges are politically motivated to do what they do. What's gonna get me votes, what do the voters think is the best verdict, as opposed to right and wrong.

You also have defense attorneys who when defending the right client have almost bottomless resources to make their client not guilty, as opposed to the prosecutor who has to rely on a small budget and underpaid government employees.

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