What does Serial say about our Justice system?
Serial shows that our justice system does not always work and is often times considered broken.
Locke, Phil. "Why I Think the US Justice System Is Broken - and Why It 's Not Getting Fixed."
Wrongful Convictions Blog. Ed. Nancy Petro. N.p., 20 Feb. 2013. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.
Summary: In this Article, Mr. Locke argues that there are fourteen reasons that the justice system is broken. While his first points are rather lengthy they get much shorter towards the end of the article. His first point is that bad lawyers are the first reason that our justice system is broken. He argues that many convicts don’t have the time to research lawyers, and the ones that are provided to them by the court are not competent. His second reason is that the prosecutors are not after justice, they are after convictions. Which does not always lead to justice. He also argues that the DA is an elected political position, so a town may be mostly one side, but if there is someone is more qualified from the other party, the won 't get elected because they are from the “wrong” political party. In the rest of the article, he continues to say that there are often false confessions among witnesses to get their sentence reduced. He also says that cops can manufacture and destroy evidence to sway the case one way or another. His final point is that there is nothing being done to fix any of the number of problems the justice system has. Analysis: The Author here is making some very good points in stating that many things are not the way they should be in our justice system. Lawyers can be incompetent with the material of cases, but if you have a court appointed lawyer, you don’t get to choose who your lawyer is, which can be argued is a point of why our justice system is broken. The quality of your court representation is often directly correlated with the amount of money you pay for representation. Some lawyers even show up intoxicated to court, or don’t show up at all. It can be very hard to defend yourself when you have no experience in a courtroom. On the other side of the courtroom is the prosecutor. According to the author, they are often times after convictions not justice, and I would have to agree with this. The prosecutors get paid no matter what, but their track record gets better with the more wins, so more people want to hire them and then they in turn make more money. This is all still showing that our justice system is broken. The Juries can also be broken. It can be very hard for juries to look at a convict clearly because …show more content…
justice system. The author argues that there is complete disregard for due process in the immigration courts in Atlanta. No one in this “court” has a lawyer and can’t defend themselves because they cannot even speak the English language. The “Judge” does mass deportations, which are also not supposed to be done, and even sends some US citizens to their original country, even though they have been naturalized and are full legal US citizens. The judges don’t even question any of the inmates to find out if any of them are US …show more content…
They are deporting US citizens and doing it to clear out prison space for more people, and then making more money off of it for the deportations. For the 238 adjucators of the Immigration department, they have 390,000 cases(2009) in a year. That is an average of 4.48 cases per day., but if you take out vactions and days off that number is propbably closer to six or seven cases per day. This is probaly why many of the judges do mass deportations, so that they can not burn themselves out. But this is still a major break in our justice system. Another issue is that even though Immigration hearings are supposed to be open to the public, the buildings in which these hearings are held in are not open to the public. This can make it very hard to get the proper security clearances to view these different hearings and trial
Serial shows that our justice system does not always work and is often times considered broken.
Locke, Phil. "Why I Think the US Justice System Is Broken - and Why It 's Not Getting Fixed."
Wrongful Convictions Blog. Ed. Nancy Petro. N.p., 20 Feb. 2013. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.
Summary: In this Article, Mr. Locke argues that there are fourteen reasons that the justice system is broken. While his first points are rather lengthy they get much shorter towards the end of the article. His first point is that bad lawyers are the first reason that our justice system is broken. He argues that many convicts don’t have the time to research lawyers, and the ones that are provided to them by the court are not competent. His second reason is that the prosecutors are not after justice, they are after convictions. Which does not always lead to justice. He also argues that the DA is an elected political position, so a town may be mostly one side, but if there is someone is more qualified from the other party, the won 't get elected because they are from the “wrong” political party. In the rest of the article, he continues to say that there are often false confessions among witnesses to get their sentence reduced. He also says that cops can manufacture and destroy evidence to sway the case one way or another. His final point is that there is nothing being done to fix any of the number of problems the justice system has. Analysis: The Author here is making some very good points in stating that many things are not the way they should be in our justice system. Lawyers can be incompetent with the material of cases, but if you have a court appointed lawyer, you don’t get to choose who your lawyer is, which can be argued is a point of why our justice system is broken. The quality of your court representation is often directly correlated with the amount of money you pay for representation. Some lawyers even show up intoxicated to court, or don’t show up at all. It can be very hard to defend yourself when you have no experience in a courtroom. On the other side of the courtroom is the prosecutor. According to the author, they are often times after convictions not justice, and I would have to agree with this. The prosecutors get paid no matter what, but their track record gets better with the more wins, so more people want to hire them and then they in turn make more money. This is all still showing that our justice system is broken. The Juries can also be broken. It can be very hard for juries to look at a convict clearly because …show more content…
justice system. The author argues that there is complete disregard for due process in the immigration courts in Atlanta. No one in this “court” has a lawyer and can’t defend themselves because they cannot even speak the English language. The “Judge” does mass deportations, which are also not supposed to be done, and even sends some US citizens to their original country, even though they have been naturalized and are full legal US citizens. The judges don’t even question any of the inmates to find out if any of them are US …show more content…
They are deporting US citizens and doing it to clear out prison space for more people, and then making more money off of it for the deportations. For the 238 adjucators of the Immigration department, they have 390,000 cases(2009) in a year. That is an average of 4.48 cases per day., but if you take out vactions and days off that number is propbably closer to six or seven cases per day. This is probaly why many of the judges do mass deportations, so that they can not burn themselves out. But this is still a major break in our justice system. Another issue is that even though Immigration hearings are supposed to be open to the public, the buildings in which these hearings are held in are not open to the public. This can make it very hard to get the proper security clearances to view these different hearings and trial