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Comment by wmil | Hacker News Reader

This is a big issue in the US and it actually goes back to the Warren court. They issued a long series of rulings making it difficult to prosecute cases, without worrying about the consequences.

By the 70s crime had skyrocketed and it was clear that they had gone too far. But instead of issuing a mea culpa and reexamining past rulings, the various courts started allowing prosecutors to claim broad new powers and take extremely aggressive tactics.

By this point there's no real way to fix it. The legal system is based strongly on precedent. It can't just undo major rulings of the past and replace the with something sane.

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>By this point there's no real way to fix it. The legal system is based strongly on precedent. It can't just undo major rulings of the past and replace the with something sane.

sounds exactly like the point where a major fix must be done. Life changes faster and faster. The precedent system was great in 15th century when things look pretty much the same like in the 14th or 13th century.

Do you know of any good sources to read up on this? I'd always thought that the rise of plea dealing was linked to minimum sentencing guidelines.

By the 70s crime had skyrocketed and it was clear that they had gone too far.

Any claim that court ruler enabled crime is highly debatable. Factors causing increases and decreases in crime rates are difficult to pin-point.

One argument is returning Vietnam veterans lead to the increase in violent crime - post-war eras have a history of being associated with crime-increases from the return of veterans habituated to violence.

The crime wave you refer to tracks pretty well with the demographic bulge from the baby boom; one of the strongest predictors of crime rates has consistently been the proportion of the population that is males in the 16-24 age range.

> The legal system is based strongly on precedent. It can't just undo major rulings of the past and replace the with something sane.

Sure it can; major court rulings have been overturned by later courts, and, even if courts won't do that, the law which they were interpreting when they made the rulings (including the Constitution) can be changed, rendering the old rulings moot.

> They issued a long series of rulings making it difficult to prosecute cases, without worrying about the consequences.

Um, so? Then we need to allocate more resources to prosecute cases.

If I am falsely accused, I want my day in court. And I want it to be fair. The current system has problems on both fronts.

> If I am falsely accused

The problem is that there's no way for anyone else to determine a priori if your accusation is false or true. That's what the whole presumed innocent until proven guilty thing is about.

In reality, if you are accused AT ALL, you want your day in court and you want it to be fair. Even if you had committed a crime, if the police did something they're not supposed to that needs to get sussed out in court and you should go free.

Half the point of a trial is to make sure that nothing unfair is done by the investigators (police, prosecutor, etc). This is to keep their power in check so that they'll follow the rules. Otherwise it could get mighty tempting to fudge something a little bit "because we KNOW this is the guy!" and "we need to do the right thing."

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