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These court reforms should make the courtroom a level field for the defendant. The police are the prosecutor; are inside the government. The court, judge and jury are outside the government. The defendant is dealing with simple laws and probably has no need for a lawyer. In any case, if he can convince the jury that he has harmed no one, they should find him not guilty even if he has violated some statute. The only concern of the judge should be to assure that both the defense and prosecution have equal advantage. If the judge is a temporary referee borrowed from the jury, with no pay from the government, he will probably do just that.
Under current practice, the courtroom is hardly a level field. An accused person can be found guilty or not guilty, but the accuser runs no risk. This is equivalent to a football game where the home team can win or tie, but cannot lose without another game at the expense of the visitors. All courtroom trials should be considered 2-sided by the jury, and the jury should have a variety of verdicts available.
It should be possible for the jury to find the accuser guilty without a separate trial. The jury could also refuse a verdict; for example they could find the evidence incomplete for guilt and too damming for acquittal and thus tell the prosecutor to do a better job and come back later. The purpose of a trial is to discover the truth, not play games with words. Additionally, the jury might decide that the accused did not act alone, and a guilty verdict against only the accused would cause the case to be closed to protect the politically favored. The jury would then stop the trial until everyone involved was brought in. For one crime incident, all charges and all defendants should be tried by one jury. Multiple trials and multiple juries clog the system and should be avoided.
Finding the accuser guilty would have interesting ramifications. A prosecutor might be found guilty of withholding evidence that would exonerate the accused; he then could be sentenced to the same fate he tried to frame an innocent man to. In civil cases, a lawyer who sued for $3 million frivously might find his client (and himself) owing the $3 million. Obviously, if the lawyer stood to gain $1 million by winning, he should stand to lose $1 million by unethical conduct. If the case had merit, there would be no reason to penalize the accuser; only in cases where important evidence is withheld, or blatantly frivolous suits are filed, would the jury backlash the accuser. Unethical lawyers would disappear quickly.
Giving the jurors flexibility in sentencing could yield surprising benefits. Consider a rape case where the jurors disagree on the testimony of the victim; some suspect she consented and others think not. If the jury awarded the victim 1 bullet, what she did with it would tell volumes. She would have a hard time shooting a man between the eyes unless it really was rape; she might choose to miss instead. This is really a case of the jury deciding to let the victim choose the punishment. If the jury were less inclined to believe her, they might award one .22 short. If the crime were brutal, maybe 6 rounds of buckshot! In the case of a felon killing the breadwinner of a family, the spouse might ask the jury for the live body of the murderer to sell for parts. This eliminates the murderer, compensates the victim, stops future crimes, and costs the taxpayers nothing!
Although the jury would be expected to apply the penalty as specified in the law, their freedom to do otherwise would give them interesting options. Suppose that 11 of the jurors thought the defendant guilty, but one thought he has a reasonable doubt, thinking the prosecutor�s evidence too circumstantial. Instead of a hung jury, the jury might instead negotiate for a conviction specifying a very light penalty. This light penalty might convince the doubter, but still put a conviction on the defendant�s record for the next jury to see. A habitual criminal would soon be before another jury, but an innocent man could live down such a wrong conviction by exemplary life.
These examples should not be taken literally; they merely illustrate what might be accomplished by allowing the jury to fit the punishment to the crime. What would really happen cannot even be imagined at this point, yet it can be accurately predicted that punishments would be swift, cheap, effective, and have desirable social side effects. A government bureaucracy wastes money, lives and freedom since it has no incentive to do otherwise. An independent jury would have every incentive to be frugal and get the job done right the first time so it doesn�t come back to haunt them. This is what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they tried to separate the branches of government.
This small difference will have big results over time. If problems should develop such that this system was unworkable, the Electorate could work out a modification to fix the problem.
Nick Hull, < [email protected] >
Secretary, Committees of Correspondence
2702 Kimbrell Road, Lenoir City, Tennessee 37772
865-856-6185
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