From: rlk@underprize.think.com (Robert Krawitz)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish,misc.headlines,talk.politics.misc,misc.legal
Subject: Re: The NYPD situation (was: Say it ain't so)
Date: 2 Jan 93 15:11:52
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge Mass., USA
	<1992Dec19.014026.1517@Princeton.EDU>
	<1992Dec28.231636.1349@bony1.bony.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: underprize.think.com
In-reply-to: jake@bony1.bony.com's message of Mon, 28 Dec 92 23:16:36 GMT

In article <1992Dec28.231636.1349@bony1.bony.com> jake@bony1.bony.com (Jake Livni) writes:

   In article <1992Dec19.014026.1517@Princeton.EDU> niepornt@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (David Marc Nieporent) writes:

   >>Sure, police in the US work under very restrictive regulations and
   >>have to have their testimony and evidence reach extremely high
   >>standards.
   >
   >Is this bad?  Isn't this supposed to be one of the best things about
   >American democracy?  As compared to, say, the former Soviet Union?

   It is good, but has been made EXTREMELY expensive.  Proving guilt now
   requires so much in the way of public and private resources (much of
   it ending up in "legal fees") that it has become more and more likely
   that guilty people will be acquitted because the evidence is STILL
   insufficient to convict.  To add insult to injury acquitted people are
   treated as innocent, even when they are in fact guilty, EVEN WHEN THEY
   LATER ADMIT GUILT.

If they are found not guilty at trial, how can you say "they are in fact
guilty"?  Do you have any better method than a trial for determining
guilt?

If someone takes the stand in his own defense and denies guilt, and that
statement is later found to be incorrect, he can still be tried for
perjury.  And if he didn't take the stand, then the prosecution didn't
present a strong enough case.

Are you or are you not saying that Nelson should have been denied a
trial, that the evidence was so overwhelming that he should have been
sent to prison immediately?  Are you saying that he should have been
retried until found guilty, because "everyone knows he did it"?

   Decent people in the US continue to pay for the bad behavior of
   Indecent people.  The Legal System has proven itself unwilling or
   unable to distinguish between Decent and Indecent, only to distinguish
   between Convicted and Acquitted.  There is a growing proportion of
   Americans that finds this inadequacy of the legal system unacceptable.

Bosh.  How do you define "decent" and "indecent" (in a legal sense) in
any way other than "not guilty" and "guilty" without substituting mob
rule for justice?  South Africa solved this by "banning" people that the
state didn't like.  I don't want to emulate *that* here.

   >No, the acquittal of Nelson demonstrates that the jury didn't believe
   >that the prosecution testimony in this case proved beyond a reasonable
   >doubt that Nelson killed Rosenbaum.

   How they did so has outraged many people, not just friends of
   Yankel Rosenbaum and not just Jews.

You haven't even tried to come up with any better ideas.
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