The Lies

                The court is a place were supposedly people don’t lie. You place your hand on the book and you say the oath, promising you won’t do it. Yet so many people lie and become deceptive while on the stand. There is a term for it, Perjury. Telling a lie to the jury happens all the time and it can totally ruin someone’s life and change the outcome of a decision in court.

                Eye witness testimonies and others like it are huge factors when deciding a case. If someone says they say you kill someone, you will likely be tried for murder and possibly convicted just on the one piece of evidence. It is scary that someone has to the power to false convict you of a crime you have never done quite easily. Eye witness testimonies should really have little to zero influence on a case because someone can lie too easily. People cannot have the power to just ruin someone’s life by putting them in jail by just telling a single lie. Sure there is charges against those who do lie in the court room, but how many times have people actually been caught lying? I don’t feel like it happens very much.

                False testimonies also can have a large effect based on generalizations. We have heard it from the Ferguson case and many others, some people are treated unfair and as less in the courtroom than others. In our society, a nice white girl can just say a minority did a crime and a lot of people would believe her. Society has put generalizations on certain groups of people and it isn’t fair at all. Lying and cheating the court room is so much easier if you fit the right demographics. Juries should be totally colorblind, have no preference to gender, and not look at the wealth of a person but we all know that isn’t the case. I feel like setting up some sort of blind system where the jury does not know about the victim or the criminal’s background and demographics. IT seems like the only way right now to make court fair. Our country is devoted to everyone having equal rights but discrimination and generalizations occur, even without us knowing it. So I feel the best way to stop the bias in the courtroom is to make everyone blind to the things that do not matter.  

Punishment 

            

            The punishment of criminals in this country is very controversial, specifically the death penalty. It has been debated for years, there have been cases for it and against it. There are terrible people in this world who probably don’t deserve to be here. But what if they do deserve to be here? What if we kill an innocent which has happened many times before? IS it worth it? Why do we even do it in the first place?

            This is a very dark subject and it’s hard for me to just talk about the lives of people as if I control them so I will try to be very careful in what I say and how I say it in this post. The death penalty has so much controversy in it. You see stories like this or this or this or many other examples. Mistakes happens, false testimonies or bad evidence, it’s terrible and the death penalty can result in the death of people who are completely innocent. The death penalty is permanent, there is no going back on previous mistakes.

            But also consider that some people want that permanent solution, I wouldn’t suggest it but is it torturing criminals by locking them up for the rest of their life? Should the get the option on whether they want to keep living? It depends on who you ask but I think if someone wants to leave after therapy and help, they should be able too. I feel like just giving someone the death penalty if they don’t want to die seems barbaric and not American. Even though there are some awful people in this world, I feel like they can always come back and live a life. They may be in prison their whole lives but living is a blessing and we shouldn’t be taking that away from people, no matter how bad they are. We might lose a bit of money holding these people up for decades but I feel like it is worth it to let people enjoy the gifts given to them at birth.

The System

            I’m going to split this topic into a lot of topics because there is a lot for me to talk about and different areas. This blog I am going to talk about how broken our judicial system is in this country. There are hundreds of laws set to protect us. Our rights, our freedom, and everything is defined in the laws we’ve created over the past 300 years. Laws make our society, tell us what is right and what’s wrong, they are important and shape our country as we know it. It’s scary though that although we have so many rules, they can be so easily manipulated and people can sneak by doing wrong because of our system.

           

            There are so many rules though. It becomes so hard to keep track, sure there is murder, theft, the well known crimes, but there is so many other laws, enforcement and wacky rules that no one enforces or knows about. The judicial system of America is so complex and intricate, it is hard to understand and to me, boring to learn about.

            What ticks me off though is when people are off scot free when they shouldn’t be, or people who are in jail when they shouldn’t be. It happens a lot and in these blogs I want to talk about my opinions on our “broken” America system.

           

            Lets start with money. The American ideals are that every man has the same political and judicial power, no matter how much money they have. Money shouldn’t be a factor in court but it is huge. The rich rule the court room along with our government. We have all heard of lobbying and bribing congress but taking advantage of wealth happens in the judicial branch too. Large business and people with a lot of money can do a lot more than someone with no money. It isn’t American and it isn’t fair. People with money can hire dozens of lawyers and people to help them win. They can put heavy fees on people who can’t afford them. The way lawyers and court fees are run put heavy burden on the underprivileged, which shouldn’t be the case in our society.

            It is sad, I feel like court fees and lawyers should be set up so that they don’t put a financial burden on people who are being attacked or can’t afford it. But I also realize that fees and money make people not sue over everything. Lawyers and the court wants a lot of money and it is what keeps people out of the court room, which is good. But I just seems so unfair that people with all the money can rule the courtroom and avoid the law. Something has to change to where everyone has a fair trial, not just those who have the most money.