Absent constitutional protection, if a corrupt trial judge, acting in concert with a corrupt assistant prosecutor, should decide that some citizen should be in jail, that person will go to jail. But that is exactly what is alleged to have happened recently in Will County. There have also been corrupt judges in Cook County. Some of them are in jail at this very moment. We have had attorney generals who were sent to prison for corruption.
Abuse of power can and does happen in America.
If we someday find ourselves wrongfully detained, even if we are subsequently acquitted, we may nevertheless discover that we have been ruined by lengthy, unjustified, pretrial incarceration. That damage may be the price we are forced to pay for tolerating the emasculation of our constitution. We Americans are not immune from tyranny. Unfortunately, we sometimes act as if we were.