{"id":15164,"date":"2012-03-15T17:39:44","date_gmt":"2012-03-16T00:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=15164"},"modified":"2012-03-15T17:39:44","modified_gmt":"2012-03-16T00:39:44","slug":"if-everyone-demanded-a-jury-trial-the-system-would-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=15164","title":{"rendered":"If everyone demanded a jury trial, the system would crash"},"content":{"rendered":"

All of this short article by Michelle Alexander<\/a> (author of The New Jim Crow<\/a><\/em>) is worth reading, but here’s a highlight:<\/p>\n

No wonder, then, that most people waive their rights. Take the case of Erma Faye Stewart, a single African-American mother of two who was arrested at age 30 in a drug sweep in Hearne, Tex., in 2000. In jail, with no one to care for her two young children, she began to panic. Though she maintained her innocence, her court-appointed lawyer told her to plead guilty, since the prosecutor offered probation. Ms. Stewart spent a month in jail, and then relented to a plea. She was sentenced to 10 years\u2019 probation and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine. Then her real punishment began: upon her release, Ms. Stewart was saddled with a felony record; she was destitute, barred from food stamps and evicted from public housing. Once they were homeless, Ms. Stewart\u2019s children were taken away and placed in foster care. In the end, she lost everything even though she took the deal.<\/p>\n

On the phone, Susan said she knew exactly what was involved in asking people who have been charged with crimes to reject plea bargains, and press for trial. \u201cBelieve me, I know. I\u2019m asking what we can do. Can we crash the system just by exercising our rights?\u201d<\/p>\n

The answer is yes. The system of mass incarceration depends almost entirely on the cooperation of those it seeks to control. If everyone charged with crimes suddenly exercised his constitutional rights, there would not be enough judges, lawyers or prison cells to deal with the ensuing tsunami of litigation. Not everyone would have to join for the revolt to have an impact; as the legal scholar Angela J. Davis noted, \u201cif the number of people exercising their trial rights suddenly doubled or tripled in some jurisdictions, it would create chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such chaos would force mass incarceration to the top of the agenda for politicians and policy makers, leaving them only two viable options: sharply scale back the number of criminal cases filed (for drug possession, for example) or amend the Constitution (or eviscerate it by judicial \u201cemergency\u201d fiat).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think that mass incarceration is one of the issues which will make future Americans look back on us and say “what was wrong <\/em>with them? What were they thinking?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All of this short article by Michelle Alexander (author of The New Jim Crow) is worth reading, but here’s a highlight: No wonder, then, that most people waive their rights. Take the case of Erma Faye Stewart, a single African-American … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[135,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crossposted-on-tada","category-prisons-and-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15165,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15164\/revisions\/15165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}