Never Trust a Government Conviction
By Anthony Gregory • Wednesday October 21, 2009 12:38 PM PDT • 9 Comments
Megan Williams now says she was lying all along when accusing seven men of kidnapping, sexually abusing and assaulting her. The seven plead guilty to charges two years ago.
Indeed, “former Logan County prosecutor Brian Abraham, who was in charge of the case, said no one ever went to jail because of Williams’ statements. Instead, Abraham said Tuesday night, he decided early in the case not to rely on Williams’ statements, but on the physical evidence and the statements of the co-defendants.”
And what did the defendants admit to? “According to the admissions of those eventually convicted, Williams was physically and sexually abused. She was beaten repeatedly, held against her will, burned with hot wax, stabbed in the leg, and forced to perform oral sex on at least two defendants.”
So let me get this straight. The supposed victim claims all the crimes were made up, yet government officials claim that the evidence apart from her accusations — as in, the evidence of something that Williams now admits never happened — was enough to send them to prison.
Now, if something did not happen, and prosecutors claim the evidence and the process were still legally sufficient to put innocent people in jail, then the entire system isn’t even theoretically just.
Williams’s attorney muses, “It sounds to me that there are innocent people held in jail for something they did not do. I have no idea what convinced them to plead guilty.”
Well, I have an idea. The entire criminal justice system, like any socialist institution, is inherently rigged against actual justice. And so most people sent to prison never enjoy a trial, but instead are bullied into pleading guilty because they know their chances with a trial are slim, that the cards are stacked against them, and that if they lose a trial they will end up punished far harsher than what they could “negotiate” in a plea bargain. Despite all these plea bargains, our system is not one characterized by leniency, as we have more prisoners, both in absolute terms and per capita, than any other nation on earth. And so most convicts plead guilty, but we cannot be sure if they are actually guilty, as this was never proven beyond a reasonable doubt, even by the state’s own terms. When it is so much more attractive to cop to a heinous crime than to fight a false charge, even confessions must be doubted as a matter of course. Perhaps the standard should be to prove the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, regardless of what the accused says. But that would require far too much deliberation for each case. This would be possible in a civil society with very few crimes, but when there are seven million Americans on parole or probation or behind bars, procedural niceties cannot get in the way of an ever expanding prison state.
I couldn’t guess how many innocents have been wrongly imprisoned, even having plead guilty, for crimes they did not commit, including truly vicious crimes. But I do know that I cannot possibly trust the state when it says someone is guilty, even if there’s a confession. A system that is able to railroad seven people into confessing to crimes they never committed, whose sentencing seems to prosecutors to be soundly based on “physical evidence” and their own desperate guilty pleas, even in retrospect, even despite it being clear there was no crime all along, can simply never be trusted in general to protect justice, nor in any given case not to have committed a great error or engaged in great immorality.
Tags: Civil Liberties, Civil Society, Corruption, Criminal Justice, Law, Morality, Natural Law, The State 
Anthony,
From my observations over many years, I have arrived at a rule for my own formulation of conclusions: whenever any government functionary, ESPECIALLY one connected with the so-called criminal justice system, makes a statement, presume that it is a lie. It may not be, of course, but unless overwhelming independent evidence is adduced in support of it, the odds are that it is a lie.
Robert Higgs | Oct 21, 2009 | Reply
I suggest people interested in this topic swing by Radley Balko’s web site where he goes into lots of wrongful convictions.
Of course, it is also staggeringly depressing reading if you focus just on the abuse of police powers, prosecutorial powers, and the legal system in general. The stuff on jailhouse snitches is just sickening.
The case of Cameron Todd Wellingham is also tough to read through. He may end up being the first person to be proven innocent who was executed by the State. The antics of Gov. Rick Perry are simply disgusting.
Steve Verdon | Oct 21, 2009 | Reply
Plea bargains are a bad idea. They are beneficial only to prosecutors, who get a higher rate of convictions for less effort.
You actually have better chances with a jury trial, for a crime, where the standard of evidence is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The prosecutors lie about this point.
Prosecutors should not be paid based on rate of convictions. And they should not be permitted to offer plea bargains. Every criminal case should go to trial. It is in the Bill of Rights that way for a reason.
Jim Davidson | Oct 27, 2009 | Reply
The most-egregious pack of false convictions ever rendered by the US government were rendered in the war-crimes trials conducted in Japan and Europe after World War II.
Unwittingly, the stamp of approval lent by the numerous guilty verdicts to the perjury of concentration-camp inmates led many of the accused to plead guilty to crimes they hadn’t committed, or to exaggerate ones they had committed, overlaying the kernel of truth behind the Holocaust with a huge mythology that today supports war in the Mideast and the trampling of civil rights in many countries of Europe and elsewhere.
N. Joseph Potts | Oct 27, 2009 | Reply
I don’t know Jim. The injustice system here is very biased against defendants. In almost all malum prohibitum cases the judge will give the jury very specific instructions about how they must find the defendant (guilty). Furthermore, the judge almost always refuses to allow the law itself to become part of the evidence before the court. This allows the judge to get away with his subsequent actions. Any jurors who show the slightest amount of intellectual capability or independent thinking are immediately removed by the prosecutor. (It is most likely that the independent thinkers and intellectually capable have excused themselves from jury duty prior to the voir dire process)
Unless you can contest the jurisdiction of the court, you are better off copping a plea in most cases. With malum in se, the system may be just slightly less biased. However with the use of lengthy or consecutive sentences, mandatory minimums, and three strikes laws, it often is most prudent to take the plea.
Stanley Pinchak | Oct 28, 2009 | Reply
This is why plea-bargaining is banned in many countries. A prosecutor will often threaten a suspect with a harsh sentence if the accused does not cop a plea and implicate others under oath.
Stanley Pinchak brings up another issue. Judges prevent defense lawyers from introducing evidence and from saying what they please. The practice is an abomination to the First Amendment, but it is routine. Judges also tell the juries what they may consider and that they must rule according to the law as the judge sees it. If a defense attorney tries to tell the jury the truth – that it is fully empowered to judge the law as well as the facts, and to bring whatever verdict they think is just, the attorney can wind up in jail for contempt.
Jive Dadson | Nov 1, 2009 | Reply