Criminal justice system should be used for countering terrorism

The Proposition portray the criminal justice system as a straightforward system that never fails to produce the verdict that allows the innocent go free and the guilty are charged. As anyone who has ever flicked through a newspaper should know, we are constantly confronted with instances where we feel a guilty party has not in fact received their just desserts, so this is certainly not the case. It is not on this basis however that we refute the claim that the criminal justice system is sufficient for dealing with the threat of terrorism. The criminal justice system is exercised through prosecuting people who have broken laws. These laws, just like anti-terror legislation, can be used for self-interest in the same way the Proposition claim anti-terror legislation can. Just as side Proposition’s neighbour in the secret service can use the powers of the legislation to his own advantage, there is still judging bias or jury bias, and what is more, it is even harder to hold a judge or member of the jury accountable for their verdict on a trial as it is a government. In the famous “Let Him Have It” case of Derek Bentley[[http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A9115229]], the judge pushed the death penalty on tenuous evidence, which has been lamented ever since. The judge did eventually publish an apology, however, no move was made to remove him from judicial practice. So where are the “checks and balances” Proposition talk of which are so different to the ones which would apply to anti-terror legislation? Despite these drawbacks we maintain an overall faith in the power of legislation and THIS is what Opposition wish to draw your attention to: the fact we uphold our legal system in the face of times when the wrong man is convicted. Why do we do this? This is because we understand that a society without a legal system would be one riddled with fear of a breach of national security (which we described at the outset of our case) that would also affect individual security, as this fear would impact the way people would have to live their lives. Knowing the state was not able to protect me from threats of terror on the scale of 9/11 or even the 7/7 London bombings would deprive me of a mindset where I felt safe to go about my daily travel for example, and we see this itself as a breach of individual liberty. If people are able to get over the fact corporations frequently monitor their spending habits in order to target them with advertising, the feeling of invasion that will result from the priveleges granted to government through legislation such as the PATRIOT act surely cannot compare to the fear of literally moving through my local city. Above all, however, we still do not think that the Proposition have explained how the justice system would serve as a preventative measure against terrorist attacks. They may appeal to their comprehensive US studies, however they forget that in order to convict anyone of terrorism we would need evidence, and much of the evidence that would have to be brought to trial would be have to have been recovered using the warrant of anti terror legislation. This is because the evidence that would convict those who are planning terror attacks would not be ballistics or a lipstick mark on the coffee cup left at the house of a dead lover, but email correspondence between suspected individuals discussing plans of the attack or papers explaining how to construct your own explosive device on an aeroplane.