Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Rough and unready
From The Economist - March 19th 2005
Books and Arts
American Justice: Rough and Unready
America’s Bill of Rights pledges fairness and justice for all. But in overworked county courts up and down the land, the reality is often far less rosy.
The United States has one of the largest and most complex criminal-justice systems in the world. Fifty state court systems, each with its own traditions and legal codes, operates in tandem with a large network of federal courts. Both state and federal systems have an elaborate ladder of appellate courts. Some of the most contentious cases begin in state courts but are then allowed to migrate to federal courts.
At the top of this hierarchy sits the Supreme Court. The promise of justice guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the world’s most durable constitution is one of the things that makes America special, even unique. Yet from the bottom of this great legal pyramid, things appear rather different. To the average criminal defendant, standing before a case-hardened judge in a local court, an overworked public defender by his side, the grand promises of the American constitution can seem a world away. Steve Bogira, a veteran reporter, spent a year in an American court to find out what really goes on there.
Mr. Bogira’s book is a brilliant piece of journalism and a genuine eye-opener. He supplements his acute observations of proceedings in a courtroom in Chicago’s Cook County with meticulous research which provides the context, both locally and nationally, for understanding what is going on. He also interviews many of the participants—the judge, lawyers, defendants, witnesses, even the courthouse’s police guards—involved in the cases he observes. He visits the crammed jail cells connected to the county’s busy courthouse, where defendants are kept before hearings. Deftly weaving all these elements together, Mr Bogira has produced a compelling narrative, that is often more entertaining than most of the cop shows which are so popular on American television.
The picture that emerges is tawdry and disappointing. At the county court level, many of the constitutional rights of which Americans are so proud have degenerated into empty formulas. The vast majority of defendants are too poor to hire their own lawyer, and receive only five or ten minutes with their public defender. Most quickly agree to a plea bargain.
Even the few trials that are held rarely seem to get to the heart of the matter. Witnesses, including the police, lie; lawyers on both sides bend or conceal the truth. Until recently, even some of the judges at the Cook County courthouse were corrupt, although the worst seem to have been caught and prosecuted for taking bribes.
Mr. Bogira does not seem to have any specific agenda of his own. He does not lecture the reader or propose any sweeping reforms. But two features clearly emerge from his chronicle.
First, American courts, at least in big cities, are swamped by a flood of non-violent drug offences, most committed by addicts who continually re-offend. This unending and unsuccessful, war on drug-use has so distorted the legal system that genuine due process, as promised by the constitution and enshrined by two centuries of Supreme Court judgments, is impossible to deliver. Instead a melancholy stream of poor people flows through what is little more than a processing centre.
Second, the taste for severe retribution which has prevailed in America over the past few decades has produced such long criminal sentences that, unless represented by an expensive private lawyer, defendants can no longer afford to exercise even the few rights they do retain. Most publicly defended accused agree to a plea bargain because of an unspoken, though very real, “trial tax”; if they demand a trial and lose, a draconian sentence will be imposed. If they plead guilty right away, they often get off much more lightly, sometimes escaping jail altogether. Judges, in other words, have been given enormous power to bully and cajole defendants, and for most defendants trials have become superfluous. Mr. Bogira watches a few cases where even apparently innocent defendants agree to a plea bargain rather than run the risk of a trial conviction.
It may well be the case that impoverished defendants in other countries are not treated any better. Maybe this is the best that can be expected in any busy big city courtroom which has to process hundreds of cases every year. Maybe. But it is not what most Americans believe their criminal-justice system to be.
Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse. By Steve Bogira. Knopf: 416 pages; $25
Books and Arts
American Justice: Rough and Unready
America’s Bill of Rights pledges fairness and justice for all. But in overworked county courts up and down the land, the reality is often far less rosy.
The United States has one of the largest and most complex criminal-justice systems in the world. Fifty state court systems, each with its own traditions and legal codes, operates in tandem with a large network of federal courts. Both state and federal systems have an elaborate ladder of appellate courts. Some of the most contentious cases begin in state courts but are then allowed to migrate to federal courts.
At the top of this hierarchy sits the Supreme Court. The promise of justice guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the world’s most durable constitution is one of the things that makes America special, even unique. Yet from the bottom of this great legal pyramid, things appear rather different. To the average criminal defendant, standing before a case-hardened judge in a local court, an overworked public defender by his side, the grand promises of the American constitution can seem a world away. Steve Bogira, a veteran reporter, spent a year in an American court to find out what really goes on there.
Mr. Bogira’s book is a brilliant piece of journalism and a genuine eye-opener. He supplements his acute observations of proceedings in a courtroom in Chicago’s Cook County with meticulous research which provides the context, both locally and nationally, for understanding what is going on. He also interviews many of the participants—the judge, lawyers, defendants, witnesses, even the courthouse’s police guards—involved in the cases he observes. He visits the crammed jail cells connected to the county’s busy courthouse, where defendants are kept before hearings. Deftly weaving all these elements together, Mr Bogira has produced a compelling narrative, that is often more entertaining than most of the cop shows which are so popular on American television.
The picture that emerges is tawdry and disappointing. At the county court level, many of the constitutional rights of which Americans are so proud have degenerated into empty formulas. The vast majority of defendants are too poor to hire their own lawyer, and receive only five or ten minutes with their public defender. Most quickly agree to a plea bargain.
Even the few trials that are held rarely seem to get to the heart of the matter. Witnesses, including the police, lie; lawyers on both sides bend or conceal the truth. Until recently, even some of the judges at the Cook County courthouse were corrupt, although the worst seem to have been caught and prosecuted for taking bribes.
Mr. Bogira does not seem to have any specific agenda of his own. He does not lecture the reader or propose any sweeping reforms. But two features clearly emerge from his chronicle.
First, American courts, at least in big cities, are swamped by a flood of non-violent drug offences, most committed by addicts who continually re-offend. This unending and unsuccessful, war on drug-use has so distorted the legal system that genuine due process, as promised by the constitution and enshrined by two centuries of Supreme Court judgments, is impossible to deliver. Instead a melancholy stream of poor people flows through what is little more than a processing centre.
Second, the taste for severe retribution which has prevailed in America over the past few decades has produced such long criminal sentences that, unless represented by an expensive private lawyer, defendants can no longer afford to exercise even the few rights they do retain. Most publicly defended accused agree to a plea bargain because of an unspoken, though very real, “trial tax”; if they demand a trial and lose, a draconian sentence will be imposed. If they plead guilty right away, they often get off much more lightly, sometimes escaping jail altogether. Judges, in other words, have been given enormous power to bully and cajole defendants, and for most defendants trials have become superfluous. Mr. Bogira watches a few cases where even apparently innocent defendants agree to a plea bargain rather than run the risk of a trial conviction.
It may well be the case that impoverished defendants in other countries are not treated any better. Maybe this is the best that can be expected in any busy big city courtroom which has to process hundreds of cases every year. Maybe. But it is not what most Americans believe their criminal-justice system to be.
Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse. By Steve Bogira. Knopf: 416 pages; $25
