To a large extent. You know the witnesses and evidence. You don't necessarily know how the defense will address the prosecution's narrative until they do. There's an element of the unexpected in everything, even testimony, which is why you have cross and redirect, etc.
Fair enough. It doesn't seriously take away from the point that I was making, but again, fair enough point. :idunno:
Yes, it's an over simplification. The defense does a number of things. It may simply refute the evidence provided, or challenge the veracity of it, the manner of its collection, the chain of possession, ect. (largely procedural checks of real importance relative to rights). It may move on the insufficiency for a directed verdict, it may do all that and supply an alternate reading/narrative of the evidence in route to defeating the prosecutorial narrative relative to the standard for conviction. And I'm doing this off the top of my head, so I've likely left a couple of things out.
You're giving me a number of premises. The defense is arguing x, y, and z. Great. So what? What conclusion is the defense trying to draw? You're just pushing the question back.
Because they serve as reasoned checks and balances against a greater likelihood of error in enforcing law. Consider, the charges begin with the police then reach a prosecutor and even a grand jury before making their way to indictment and then trial. All along that course is the potential for willful or accidental misconduct and error.
Then by your own admission, there's probably less likelihood of error if we cut out all the middle men and make sure that the cops are as likely do it properly in the first place as possible.
All along that course the rights of the accused are at stake.
Two points:
1. If the accused is accused, then he's probably guilty. That's the overwhelming probability. :idunno:
2. You say that as though this complex adversarial system is necessary to protect the rights of the accused, and this cannot be accomplished in other ways. I simply disagree with this. If you want an image of what this would look like, then I point you to the early Judge Dredd comics.
Would you want the doctor who performed your operation acting as the judge of whether the medical complications that arose from your surgery were the result of malpractice?
Of course you wouldn't. And you don't want the same people who charged you to determine the outcome of the charge.
Disanalogous! You are presupposing that the doctor has made a mistake. Of course, presupposing a mistake has been made, it makes no sense to entrust the evaluation of that mistake to the very person who made it. We may generalize this.
Nonetheless, the aim of the doctor is health, and it is not unfitting to entrust the very same doctor who made the diagnosis also to prescribe the cure, and even perhaps to enact it (perhaps, for example, by means of a medical or surgical procedure).
Likewise in the case of the interrogation, investigation, arrest, sentencing and punishment of lawbreakers.
Note that nothing of what I say precludes the possibility of outside evaluation in the event that the arresting, judging and sentencing officer(s) (let us call them "judges") go astray or make mistakes (though, given the appropriate education and training, this would prove extremely unlikely...even without what I would consider the ideal education and training (which we find detailed in the Judge Dredd comics), it's still extremely unlikely; again, watch any episode of Cops).
So we have an adversarial system. One side presents the prosecution and we have a second lawyer singularly dedicated to making sure the rights of the accused are protected and that the prosecutor meets his obligations before the law.
Does this system make sense in the evaluation of any other kind of evidence? Mathematical? Biological? Medical?
No, but I've watched the movies on it.
The first Judge Dredd movie has the looks, but doesn't really live up to the comics. Judge Dredd never takes off his helmet (even when he actually is falsely accused, arrested and sentenced to 20 years on Titan in the Day the Law Died saga...the comics, at least the early comics, have no interest in Judge Dredd the guy...we're only interested in him insofar as he is the Law), and he most certainly doesn't have a love interest (all of the judges are celibate; in this respect, at least, I consider Mr. Wagner to have had even greater insight than the great Plato himself).
The second Judge Dredd movie (Dredd 3D) didn't really have the looks, but they pretty much had the character down. That said, the film is much gorier than the comics. Mega-city 1 usually doesn't exact the death penalty. Even the murder of a street judge, for example, or multiple homicide, in the comics, generally only cares a maximum sentence of life in the isocubes (not to say that this is a mark against the movie or in favor of the comics).
The more concentrated the power in any system the more likely an unjust outcome and corruption.
This is an unproven axiom which is dogmatically asserted in democratic regimes. I find no reason to hold that this is true without qualification.
Ours works. And it works in the overwhelming majority of cases. That's why 98% of cases never make trial and of those that do and are subsequently appealed most remain in the verdict rendered.
Ok. And what about the guilty people who don't get convicted or get lighter sentences than they deserve? You say the system works because it's pretty much only guilty in prison. Fine. I say that it doesn't work: too many guilty people who get arrested either never face trial, or else, face lesser charges, or else, take plea deals and serve much less time than they deserve (if they even deserve to live at all, for that matter).
