My Appeal To The Obama Administration: Equal Distribution of Justice

I know there are a lot of things to be worked on in this country, but while some people know more about economics or care more about this, and others about healthcare, and others still about education, my main concern is the justice system.

Every single policy and law that is implemented finds its way through the legal system. If the justice system is corrupt to begin with, getting larger policies reversed or put into place, is going to be more difficult than taking care of the criminal side of things, and civil law too.

Civil law is important and without adequate representation, the only group whose civil rights are protected and guaranteed, are those of the rich.

Public defenders do not just represent people for the defense of crimes which, many times, people are falsely accused for, but also for families.

Poor families in America get the shaft, because of bad public defense. And oftentimes, these are not bad families, but just families others have decided to pick on for one reason or another.

Either The Washington Post or The New York Times recently had an editorial, from the editor, about the need for funds and restructuring of the public defense system. It asks people not to forget that this is an essential right which needs to be fixed, and the editor fears money will go to other things because the public, in general, has a misconception of what public defense is for.

This piece made note that recently, in Florida, a law was passed which allows public defenders to REFUSE to represent people for misdemeanor crimes, in favor of representing those charged with greater crimes. Misdemeanor charges have gone up into the thousands, and what happens, is that a first-time charge of misdemeanor, without good representation, sets someone up to be tagged as a "criminal" for the rest of their lives, whether or NOT they actually committed the crime. It goes on record, and makes them more susceptible to be falsely charged for other things, or wrongly convicted. It affects reputation, and character, which is everything in trying to establish or disprove motive or intent, or the probability that someone would do such a thing. Some people have enemies, for almost no fault of their own, and sometimes these enemies are rich, and simply want to work on someone's reputation by trying to build a criminal record against them. This happened to me.

If they can be sure they will not caught or held accountable, and that the public defense is either easily bribed, non-existant, or lousy, this is a strategy for them, to keep others down.

The law in Florida, is illegal, in my opinion. Everyone has the right to not only defense or the "semblance" of defense, but a real, ass-kicking defense. Only then, is it possible to determine whether charges are even TRUE or not. If you don't have good defense, you have lawyers who are not even doing basic research or obtaining essential discovery on behalf of their clients.

Instead of throwing the burden on those charged with misdemeanors, and telling them they don't get counsel, it should be the other way around. The state should be told that until they are providing adequate counsel and managing their funds to provide for this, they must throw OUT all charges.

Any charge which is unequal, is unequal distribution of RIGHTS. We are all supposedly guaranteed basic human rights and equality at the most fundamental levels. The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The pursuit of happiness is impossible when families are torn apart because there is no reasonable public defense. There is no liberty when people are falsely charged with misdemeanors, refused counsel, and end up having their liberty taken from them with jailtime, for a crime they never committed. There is no liberty when people spend a decade or more in jail, INNOCENT of a crime, and have to await a court's decision on "whether or not to allow DNA" to be admitted as new evidence. And the deprivation of either liberty or the pursuit of happiness, is also an assault on the right to "life". While strict interpretation may claim this refers to actual physical life, it is of no use to have physical life if everything else is stripped from you and you're left living like Job. That's not "life". There are corrupt people who know this, who use the way the justice system is currently set up, to BURY PEOPLE ALIVE.

These people have rights.

And the first thing I think the U.S. needs to work on, besides just basic stabilization of economy, is the justice system.

The system needs more money, but like banks, they need to come up with a better plan. They need to show how they are completely revamping the justice system (including social services) and public defense in general. That includes new laws to enable the poor to prosecute others for defamation and other civil offenses, which cannot be enforced without public assistance and defense. There is a line between fine speech and abuse and harassment through defamation and slander, and it sets the victim up for worser things if it isn't fixed.

What is counterintuitive, is that the State, when it doesn't provide reasonable public defense for others, profits. Their jails and jail employees profit. Those who build jails profit. More people end up going on social services and this justifies the jobs of the social workers and the social services and CPS.

While complaining about the work they do, and claiming to be wanting to help others, the state employees directly profit off of the poor.

The other point to fixing the justice system, is that when this is fixed and the right people are held accountable, there will be less corporate crime affecting the entire nation.

Prosecute the rich for crime, and free the poor from persecution. Once the right people are held accountable, and protections are made for the civil rights of those who are at an unfair disadvantage, things will look up for everyone.

My thing isn't equal distribution of goods, but equal distribution of justice. Fair is fair, when it comes to human civil rights, national or international.