Court to feds: Stop deporting defense witnesses
One of the marks of the ubiquitous corruption of our justice system is precisely this sort of unethical prosecutorial behavior, which is now the norm. You want to know why we torture, assassinate, and imprison without limitation or recourse? This is why: our criminal justice system is rotten to the core, and at the same time arrogant.Common sense and fairness would seem to dictate that the federal government ought not deport an exonerating witness before the witness has been allowed to testify. But good sense is apparently in short supply, at least thats what the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeal said Friday in a sharply worded ruling.
"May the government deport an illegal alien who can provide exculpatory evidence for a criminal defendant before counsel for that defendant has even been appointed? We believe the answer is self-evident, as the government recognized in an earlier case where it moved to vacate a conviction after it deported witnesses whose testimony would have exculpated defendant," Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for the three judge panel.
The court is absolutely correct to rebuke the government and make clear "the unilateral deportation of witnesses favorable to a defense" is not permitted.
The case involves a man charged with alien smuggling. Border patrol agents arrested Jonathan Leal-Del Carmen in 2010. He and another man were charged with bringing a dozen immigrants illegally into the U.S. from Mexico. Three of the immigrants who were detained told agents that Leal-Del Carmen gave orders to the group or arranged for the journey. But one woman in the group told officers that Leal-Del Carmen did not issue orders. Officers asked her three times and each time she said Leal-Del Carmen was not the ringleader. In the end, three immigrants whose testimony helped the prosecution were allowed to remain in the U.S. as material witnesses. But the women, who presumably could have testified for the defense, was deported before Leal-Del Carmen was even arraigned. The jury never heard her testimony and Leal-Del Carmen was convicted on some of the charges against him.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-immigration-deport-witnesses-20120917,0,5059957.story
xchrom
(108,903 posts)jody
(26,624 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)jody
(26,624 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)jody
(26,624 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)Just saying, I think Jody has a point.
"Yes, Miss Festive."
xchrom
(108,903 posts)but i think you'd have to do some kind of end run around how americans vote.
and the basic corruption of representatives when they do get elected.
marmar has thread up in good reads about how if we want change -- we have to build a real Left.
i agree -- but would also note that seems from this vantage point to be almost impossible.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)So it becomes a matter of consciousness raising, but you still have to talk about government, for consciousness raising, and government is where any future solution will be enacted, made into law and enforced or flouted, same as today. So I think we have two different sides of the same problem, and we neglect either side at our peril. In a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people", you see that the people have to be big players, but then they are players in the government.
And I have to say, looking back over my lifetime. we've had some good success with this consciousness raising stuff, we're far from done, but we've come a long way from what I remember too.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)We have made some Progress in consciousness.
But things are seeming precarious right now.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)My primary motive to protect my health these days is so I can see how this all comes out, and I just might live long enough, the way things are going.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)The corporations stand as paragons of virtue in your universe?
The people behind the corruption of government?
The people who peddle GW denial, all forms of deregulation and corporate and bank bailouts, and who just generally behave like gangsters in the schoolyard, these people re not corrupt?
Where is your head?
jody
(26,624 posts)Corruption is the "effect".
What you address is the "cause".
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)If the corporations were not corrupt--or were at least restrained in the range of their corruption--then We the People would be able to clean up the government.
Anyway, I think we're engaging in some rather pointless debate here. The fact is that most of our major social and economic institutions have become massively corrupt, and we seem to lack effective institutional means to do much about it.
jody
(26,624 posts)just as many unemployed have given up looking for a job.
How much longer before enough people have simply given up and what happens then to the grand experiment in government called the United States?
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)I view re-electing Obama as a way of buying a little more time for the planet. That's a little more time for us to find non-institutional means. Like maybe some sort of massive cultural transformation. Such things have happened in the past, and are well documented in both the anthropological and historical literature.
I look to things like the spirit of Madison 2011, and that of the Occupy movement, as carrying the seeds of change.
jody
(26,624 posts)Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)Interesting thought.
jody
(26,624 posts)Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)I take your point.
midnight
(26,624 posts)crimes and go to prison....