What Whitehead describes and what I have noticed for many years is that the American people have lost, in addition to their own sense of truth and falsity, any sense of mercy and justice for other peoples. Americans accept no sense of responsibility for the millions of peoples that Washington has exterminated over the past two decades dating back to the second term of Clinton. Every one of the millions of deaths is based on a Washington lie.
When Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, was asked if the Clinton's regime's sanctions, which had claimed the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children, were justified, she obviously expected no outrage from the American people when she replied in the affirmative.
Americans need to face the facts. The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise.
The American Nightmare: The Tyranny of the Criminal Justice System
John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute
July 21, 2015Justice in America is not all it's cracked up to be.
Just ask Jeffrey Deskovic, who spent 16 years in prison for a rape and murder he did not commit. Despite the fact that Deskovic's DNA did not match what was found at the murder scene, he was singled out by police as a suspect because he wept at the victim's funeral (he was 16 years old at the time), then badgered over the course of two months into confessing his guilt. He was eventually paid $6.5 million in reparation.James Bain spent 35 years in prison for the kidnapping and rape of a 9-year-old boy, but he too was innocent of the crime. Despite the fact that the prosecutor's case was flimsy -- it hinged on the similarity of Bain's first name to the rapist's, Bain's ownership of a red motorcycle, and a misidentification of Bain in a lineup by a hysterical 9-year-old boy -- Bain was sentenced to life in prison. He was finally freed after DNA testing proved his innocence, and was paid $1.7 million.
Mark Weiner got off relatively easy when you compare his experience to the thousands of individuals who are spending lifetimes behind bars for crimes they did not commit. Weiner was wrongfully arrested, convicted, and jailed for more than two years for a crime he too did not commit. In his case, a young woman claimed Weiner had abducted her, knocked her out and then sent taunting text messages to her boyfriend about his plans to rape her. Despite the fact that cell phone signals, eyewitness accounts and expert testimony indicated the young woman had fabricated the entire incident, the prosecutor and judge repeatedly rejected any evidence contradicting the woman's far-fetched account, sentencing Weiner to eight more years in jail. Weiner was only released after his accuser was caught selling cocaine to undercover cops.
In the meantime, Weiner lost his job, his home, and his savings, and time with his wife and young son. As Slate reporter journalist Dahlia Lithwick warned, "If anyone suggests that the fact that Mark Weiner was released this week means 'the system works,' I fear that I will have to punch him in the neck. Because at every single turn, the system that should have worked to consider proof of Weiner's innocence failed him."
The system that should have worked didn't, because the system is broken, almost beyond repair.
In courtroom thrillers like 12 Angry Men and To Kill a Mockingbird, justice is served in the end because someone -- whether it's Juror #8 or Atticus Finch -- chooses to stand on principle and challenge wrongdoing, and truth wins.
Unfortunately, in the real world, justice is harder to come by, fairness is almost unheard of, and truth rarely wins.
On paper, you may be innocent until proven guilty, but in actuality, you've already been tried, found guilty and convicted by police officers, prosecutors and judges long before you ever appear in a courtroom. Chronic injustice has turned the American dream into a nightmare. At every step along the way, whether it's encounters with the police, dealings with prosecutors, hearings in court before judges and juries, or jail terms in one of the nation's many prisons, the system is riddled with corruption, abuse and an appalling disregard for the rights of the citizenry.
Due process rights afforded to a person accused of a crime -- the right to remain silent, the right to be informed of the charges against you, the right to representation by counsel, the right to a fair trial, the right to a speedy trial, the right to prove your innocence with witnesses and evidence, the right to a reasonable bail, the right to not languish in jail before being tried, the right to confront your accusers, etc. -- mean nothing when the government is allowed to sidestep those safeguards against abuse whenever convenient.
It's telling that while President Obama said all the right things about the broken state of our criminal justice system -- that we jail too many Americans for nonviolent crimes (we make up 5 percent of the world's population, but our prison population constitutes nearly 25% of the world's prisoners), that we spend more money on incarceration than any other nation ($80 billion a year), that we sentence people for longer jail terms than their crimes merit, that our criminal justice system is far from color-blind, that the nation's school-to-prison pipeline is contributing to overcrowded jails, and that we need to focus on rehabilitation of criminals rather than retribution -- he failed to own up to the government's major role in contributing to this injustice in America.
Indeed, while Obama placed the responsibility for reform squarely in the hands of prosecutors, judges and police, he failed to acknowledge that they bear the burden of our failed justice system, along with the legislatures and corporations who have worked with them to create an environment that is hostile to the rights of the accused.
In such a climate, we are all the accused, the guilty and the suspect. As I document in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we're operating in a new paradigm where the citizenry are presumed guilty and treated as suspects, our movements tracked, our communications monitored, our property seized and searched, our bodily integrity disregarded, and our inalienable rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" rendered insignificant when measured against the government's priorities.
Every American is now in jeopardy of being targeted and punished for a crime he did not commit thanks to an overabundance of arcane laws. Making matters worse, by allowing government agents to operate above the law, immune from wrongdoing, we have created a situation in which the law is one-sided and top-down, used as a hammer to oppress the populace, while useless in protecting us against government abuse.
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