Guilty is Guilty

Note: Before reading My Thoughts, please read My Disclaimer!

This is another one of those rants about our society's lack of personal accountability. It seems that very often people are not held accountable for their bad behavior, even when everyone knows that they are criminally "guilty". First of all, there are plea-bargains -- people being held accountable to a lesser charge because the criminal justice system is just too busy to conduct a trial for every loser that gets himself in trouble. Prosecuting a drug dealer as if they were just a drug user doesn't get the drugs off of the streets.

Plea-bargains are bad enough, but when people are found "not guilty" solely because of some technicality, that's just wrong. Now, I don't have any feel for how often this happens. Perhaps movies and TV have made me think it happens much more often than in reality. But, even if it happens rather seldom, it is still a big problem.

Consider this recommendation from our local unscrupulous lawyers, discussing a choice of chemical tests for a DUI arrest:

If you believe that your blood-alcohol concentration is above the legal limit, choose a breath test or urine test, as these are the least accurate and most easily impeached by DUI lawyers.

Part of the reason we have a criminal "justice" system is to protect society from those that misbehave. If someone kills someone else, society needs to be protected from that person killing again. If someone drinks and drives, we need to do all we can to prevent them from driving drunk again -- and possibly killing someone. I don't care about their excuses. Keep them from driving drunk, by whatever means necessary -- punishment, revoking their license, putting them in jail -- whatever it takes to prevent that individual from needlessly endangering others. If we let them off the hook because of some technicality (or some sob story), how is society protected?

Sure, I know that my attorney friends would tell me that an aggressive defense is necessary to ensure that the "system" isn't abused by law enforcement. While that is certainly very important, justice is never served by letting a guilty person go free. In those situations, the law enforcement personnel who broke the rules ALSO needs to be held accountable, through a method that is prescribed by law. How is the law enforcement personnel held accountable by letting a guilty person go free? Sure, they are encouraged to behave differently in the future, but that's hardly as significant.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, many of these injustices occur because lots of people find lousy excuses to avoid jury duty, leaving only the retired and unemployed to determine who is to be held accountable for their bad behavior. The rest of us need to show up at jury duty and hold people accountable!

Guilty is guilty!