lab@qubix.UUCP (Larry Bickford) (08/17/83)
One of the headaches of the American (can't speak for Canadian)
judicial system is that it has turned from a search for truth into
an adversary system. Whether the defendant is guilty or not means
nothing any more; it now seems that if anyone on the "people's"
side does the slightest thing wrong, the guilty go free. It's an
attitude that's being propagated by the law schools.
The Fourth Amendment states that the people have a right to be
secure in their property. It does NOT state that the defendant
shall go free if his rights are violated. Unfortunately, that has
been the action. A better one would be to convict the guilty and
also prosecute those who violated his rights. (I have heard this
is the case in the UK. Would appreciate correction/information.)
Truth, Justice, and the American Way are concepts now long-gone.
They don't have to be, if we would get our pride out of the way.
Larry Bickford,
{ihnp4,ucbvax,decvax}!decwrl!qubix!lab, {ittvax,amd70}!qubix!labmason@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Mason) (08/20/83)
Perhaps a reasonable approach to overzealous police is to have police
commissions (or whatever) that do something serious when personal rights are
infringed in the process of conducting an investigation..something like firing
all with foreknowledge, instead of 2 weeks suspension with pay during the
investigation and 2 week suspension without pay as punishment.
I personally think the Canadian system seems reasonable, because few
people have their rights seriously abused, BUT this seems to depend almost
solely on the good intentions of the police (usually good, but there are some
glaring examples of peoples rights being totally trampled with very little
being done about it). The law has recently changed due to the Charter of
Rights and there was concern that it would make our system too much like
the American one, but there seems to be little indication of much change so
far (14 months).
-- Gandalf's flunky Hobbit -- Dave Mason, U. Toronto CSRG,
{cornell,watmath,ihnp4,floyd,allegra,utzoo,uw-beaver}!utcsrgv!mason
or {cwruecmp,duke,linus,lsuc,research}!utzoo!utcsrgv!mason (UUCP)