THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
VS GOD’S
“THE VICTIM JUSTICE SYSTEM”
We admire lawyers who get a criminal “off” especially if everyone knows the accused “did it”, instead we should be jailing them for subverting truth and obstructing justice” Joe L
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME…. IS IT THE NAME?
“The criminal justice system” is a terrible name not because it suggests we do justice for the criminal but because it forgets to mention justice for the victim and the state. The whole point of a justice system is to make the injured party whole and to prevent future crime. But once we created a “criminal justice system” the name, the picture it creates is our mind, caused us to change the laws, which finally culminated in removing the victim out of the system.
The judge and at least 2 lawyers, assorted policeman and others, all thinking and talking about what should we do with the accused/criminal, and is this or other action fair to the accused? Are we trampling on his rights? We are wonderfully considerate and concerned about dispensing justice to accused and criminals. My question is what happened to the injured party? Why isn’t anyone advocating for the victim?
In civil court unlike criminal court, everyone talks about what needs to be done to make the injured party is whole again. The two systems started out “like the Bible” making the victim whole. Changing the name of one system changed the system. All the money is spent on giving justice to accused/criminal and none goes to the victim. The state interest must be to make the victim whole; it needs to represent the injured party in criminal matters, not it selves.
Neither the truth nor justice but accused/criminal rights are our overriding motto. As if we “vowed” to give justice to criminal at “all cost”. Lawyers convinced us that in order to make an “even playing field” we should allow them to represent the fight on behalf of the accused, as if they were themselves who are the accused. When our lawyers, officers of the court, convinced us that a good defense lawyer should do everything for his client not for truth and justice, truth and justice went out the window. Justice is only possible if the truth not “winning” is the desired goal of any court case. Today, it is not how much truth a lawyer uncovers that counts but how many cases he won, especially where we know the accuser is guilty and his lawyer “got him off”. We admire those lawyers and pay them a fortune to defend us instead of jailing them for subverting truth and obstructing justice. Everyone forgot that a Justice system ought not to be about how smart or sneaky your lawyer is but how right or wrong you are.
By allowing lawyers’ conversation with their clients to be privileged we extended the suspect’s self incrimination laws to attorneys. The point of our forefathers was that confession alone was not sufficient because of the fear of coerced confession. The duty of an attorney is to advocate for the accused, like as friend who knows the law would, not as the accused alter ego. I suggest that if an accused tells his lawyer any information without being coerced, it should not be privileged. An accused is entitled to a fair trial, but a fair trial ought not to include the legal right to “get away with it”, to lie and cheat. A fair trial is one that uncovers the truth. It is clear that without lawyers right for “privileged” conversation with the accused, it would be a lot harder for the lawyers to get guilty people off. Why is that really bad? Any law that impedes truth and justice in order to protect the accused or accuser is an evil law regardless of what any slick tongued lawyer or politician would argue. Our present laws are designed to give justice to the criminal even at the cost of ignoring the truth, the victim and society’s needs!!
What the Goldman’s did in civil court in the O.J case should be done by the government on behalf of each victim as part of the criminal case. The Government took responsibility for 9-11 and compensated the victims. Of course under God’s law some offences can only be paid with life, like rape and murder which all of us enlightened people feel are too harsh. God the programmer of our DNA is telling us by these laws that rape and murder are not “fixable” by any punishment, that the energies will not be balanced, that eye for eye will not be satisfied unless we take life for life. The Torah God hints that he tried it without eye for eye and it didn’t work. When God didn’t kill Cain for killing his brother, it didn’t take long before the world became evil and God had to destroy humanity and start again.
If we raise our head and look forward a 100 or even 1000 years, we would all want a society void of murder and rape, therefore the people who commit such crimes must be removed from our collective gene pool. It is strangely also a form of love for the future of our children. Creating such laws will insure that the world we leave is better than the one we came into. I shudder to think about taking someone eye, but that’s what convinced me that it is fair, proportionate and preventative, far better than jail. Do unto others, is very effective.
“Having lost our objectives we redoubled our efforts”. The misleading term “the criminal justice system” caused us to take the victim out of the justice system. “We the people” not the victim becomes the accusers. We have a lawyer for the accused/criminal and one for the government, what happened to victim? Under The Victim justice system, under Torah law the government lawyer would represent the victim. But in order to find the truth, the court, the judge and both lawyer need to work as a team rather than in adversary position. I know it almost seems anti American, because we are so concern with “fair play”. When it comes to justice the truth ought to be the only “fair play”, the only desired outcome … The Bible suggests that a civil offence against the accused/criminal should be prosecuted concurrently and as part of the criminal case. It recognizes that someone has to pay and that it ought to be the criminal.
Under our present system: the money (say $5000) is generally gone forever; this means that because “eye for eye” was not followed, the energies are not balanced, the victim is upset and short money. We pay about $35,000 a year to maintain an average criminal in jail. Then, between jail attorneys and other expenses this $5000 theft ends up costing the government $50,000 or more!! Everyone forgets to mention that 20 year sentence carries a $1, 00,000 bill to the government. I am told the average death row prisoner has about a million spent on his incarceration? We decide to spend this kind of money on a killer because we believe all life is scared. When all life is indiscriminately sacred nothing is sacred.
Under Torah law: Muhammad misquoted the Bible, suggesting that the hand of a thief should be cut off. The Biblical God decreed that the thief pays back Double, which is what God calls “eye for eye”, if he has no money he would need to work it off. Strangely this law satisfies both God’s “eye for eye” and the Hindu concept of “balance the energies”, because by paying double the thief will feel a real loss like the VICTIM, who in turn feels a real gain like the thief felt, the energies then get balanced. The Bible is often compared to water, always seeking balance.
I believe changing the name to the Victim Justice System is easy to institute and ought to upset no one. I suggest it will eventually cause the laws to change toward balance, so we and our planet can survive and thrive…
The best way to predict the future is to create it.