OUR LEGAL SYSTEM IS DISINTEGRATING

In days gone by, the law could be depended upon to do the right thing. No more. As a result, people are losing faith in the legal system.

The legal system is like a dike. It can handle a leak. Cracks are another story. The leaks have turned into cracks and the walls are in danger of collapsing.

There are concrete examples.

First, there is Ferguson, Missouri. More than sixty days have gone by and still no grand jury report. Indictment or no indictment? A whole community awaits the decision. Protests continue. Confrontations between police and citizens commonplace.

Sixty days plus is totally unreasonable.

There is a gentleman living in St. Louis who reads my blog and listens to my blog talk radio show with a degree of frequency. Ferguson is a suburb of St. Louis. He e mailed me that the feeling in the St Louis area is that the grand jury will not indict the police officer. Ferguson not may, but will explode. The community could see itself burned to the ground.

The black people of Ferguson have a right to be upset. Justice delayed is justice denied. There is no reason the prosecutor could not have moved the process along. He is in total control. It is obvious he did not want to.

A crack in the dike.

Now comes Mississippi. A State not unaccustomed to illegalities. Lynchings, beatings, what have you. Mississippi justice never changes.The State is accustomed to doing things its way and continues to do so. Its way not necessarily the right way.

Don't get arrested in Scott County, Mississippi.Once arrested you are tossed in jail and the key thrown away. The Scott County system is to immediately incarcerate a wrongdoer, never take the person before a judge, never provide a bail hearing, never provide counsel, and never have a trial.

I kid you not. Those arrested are kept in jail under such conditions for up to a year. At some point, a Scott County power to be decides the person has done enough time and sets the person free.

There is a Constitutional right to counsel, a speedy trial, and a fair bail hearing. Not in Scott County. Cases are frozen in what might be described as a legal black hole.

Another leak in the dike? Maybe a crack?

You would think that injustice as exists in Mississippi is common only to Mississippi. That such would never occur in the north. Wrong.

New York City is an example. Kalief Browder was arrested on March 15, 2010. He was walking home with a friend. They lived in the Bronx. A high crime area. A police car pulled up with a witness in the back seat saying that is him. The witness/victim claimed a back pack had been stolen. Browder denied the charge. He was 16 at the time.

Bail was set at $3,000. No way his Bronx based family could come up with that kind of money. He had a lawyer. He was frequently brought before a judge. Each time the prosecutor requested more time and the case was adjourned.

It was adjourned for almost 3 years. All this time Browder was in solitary confinement. Can you imagine!

Finally the prosecutor decided the witness' credibility was suspect. Browder had been falsely accused. He dropped the charges.

There is a Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. What happened to Browder's speedy trial? More importantly, what were his attorney and the various judges doing who permitted these adjournments?

Seems Browder's attorney did a lousy job. The judges, also. The criminal courts in New York City are crowded. Move the cases is the cry! One of the judges or judicial staff should have noticed how long Browder had been sitting around in solitary confinement with out a trial.

Then there is a prosecutor. Called District Attorney in New York. A prosecutor's job is to do Justice. Not just try and convict. It is well recognized innocent people are arrested. Where was the prosecutor's oversight which could have prevented this injustice?

I think the dike cracked here.

Detroit. A poor man's ghetto. Detroit is in bankruptcy. Municipal bankruptcies are rare. Especially one as big as Detroit's.

New grounds, new issues, coming up which were not even contemplated when the laws were passed concerning municipal bankruptcies.

A Bankruptcy Judge is omnipotent. He and he alone is the boss. He makes the decisions.

We are all familiar with Detroit's water problem. The poor cannot pay. As soon as a person's water bill hits $150, the water company turns off the water. The water company insists on being paid. The people do not have the money. Since the first of the year, 50,000 residences have had their water turned off. The water company is turning off water at the rate of 400 homes a day.

Man requires air and water to survive. No question about it. The Detroit residents are mostly black. They are not the only ones who owe the water company. A car manufacturing plant owes hundreds of thousands of dollars. So too does Detroit"s sports arena. For whatever reason, the water company is not pursuing these big guys for payment.

The United Nations got involved a couple of months ago. The UN said the right to water is a fundamental one, Detroit should turn the water of its residents back on. The UN's voice was not heard.

The matter came up before the Bankruptcy Judge two weeks ago. There was a motion to require the water company to stop the mass water shut offs. The Judge decided. He decided for the water company and against the residents. The Judge said there was no fundamental right to water service which in effect means there is no fundamental right to water.

The Judge could have ruled the other way. In order to do so, he would have had to go outside the box. Bankruptcy laws are basically to protect debtors. The Judge followed existing law to the letter. He protected the debtor water company, a department of the City of Detroit.

The decision does not make sense to me. Detroit is so far in the red that the creditors will be lucky to get ten cents on the dollar. That is the way these things go. The overall dollars owed by the residents is minuscule compared to those who owe big dollars. To have found for the residents, the ten cents would have dropped the tiniest of amounts. The creditors would get a wee bit under the ten cents on the dollar. Like $.00001 less. And the residents would have water!

United States' citizens are entitled to ".....life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The Judge in his opinion found the denial of water violated neither liberty nor the pursuit of happiness. He never mentioned "life."

Decisions like this have to affect the faith people have in the judicial system, an integral part of the legal system.

The United States Supreme Court has been coming up with some weird decisions in recent years. The perfect example is the decision holding corporations are people and therefore can contribute unlimited amounts in an election. Talk about balancing the playing field.

People are becoming increasingly unhappy with Supreme Court decisions. For the simple reason, they do not make sense.

A week ago Monday, the Supreme Court got involved in the same sex marriage issue. The nine person Court did not sit and hear oral argument. They did not entertain the Constitutional issue re same sex marriage so its decision would have nationwide implication. It rendered a one page court order stating it would not hear appeals from five States regarding the issue.

The banning of same sex marriage was the issue in each State. Certain federal appeals courts had ruled the bans unconstitutional. The Supreme Court refused to hear the cases. In effect making those decisions the law in five States. Gay people could marry!

Immediately, the media was replete with same sex advocates claiming a great victory. On my blog talk radio show the next evening, I said the celebration was premature. There were still 20 States out there where same sex marriage was not permitted.

My concern was that the Supreme Court did not solve the entire problem. The Supreme Court is omnipotent. It can do what what it wants. Why did it not hear the cases in open court and render a decision affecting every State? I warned that the opponents of same sex marriage would come out of the wood work. The battle was not over, not yet won. As with abortion, the issue could take another 20 years to totally resolve.

That was Tuesday night. Wednesday,  Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy issued an order that affected two of the States. Nevada and Idaho were stayed from marrying same sex couples. A few hours later, Kennedy issued another order. The new order said his decision only applied to Idaho.

I am writing this column on Thursday, the day after Justice Kennedy's two orders. By the time this column hits the press next Wednesday, more will have happened. I can only comment up to this point.

It is my opinion the Supreme Court was wrong in not hearing all cases involving same sex marriage in mass, considering it is a nationwide issue. People do not understand the intricacies of the law, the many minute rules affecting court procedure. All they will understand is the Supreme Court had an opportunity to act in a complete manner and failed to do so.

The dike walls are starting to give in.

The legal system has lost its way. Somehow, somewhere. The system seems to pay less and less attention to the 99 percent. Rights are violated. Rights not upheld. Rights not recognized. The system is becoming more and more out of control.

A society whose laws fail to protect everyone understandably and fairly cannot survive. If the legal system continues in its present fashion, I fear it will do to the Nation what Katrina did to New Orleans.