Criminal Trials Quotes
He was concerned about trials of high profile corporate executives for white collar crimes. He defended the CEO of Worldcom which was forced into the largest bankruptcy in American history by fraud. His client was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in jail, longer than his life expectancy. Much of the motivation of the prosecution was to set an example, send a message, and show that white collar crime is taken seriously.
Americans are divided as to whether this should be encouraged and helped or not.
Many like Black were concerned that prosecutors had the power to decide who would be charged, with what crimes, what penalties to ask for, and even able to start or end investigations of private citizens and politicians. By overcharging they are able, if they choose, to intimidate many people into pleading guilty, even for crimes that the never committed, in order to avoid taking a chance and possible have a very long jail sentence. Thus they were the most powerful people in the legal system, and had more power and less accountability, checks and balances of any public figures except perhaps for Federal Judges.
There are other researchers who have corroborated the same research that shows that eye witnesses are very frequently wrong about not only people but other details. In some, a group of people all view the same episode of a crime In progress and they have very different perceptions of what happened and who did it. Any case that depends on an eye witness can really never establish guild beyond a reasonable doubt. Yet courts generally will not allow any of this evidence to be presented before a jury in a criminal trial.
Note that in his very definition of a Petty Jury the right of the jury to ignore the judge's instructions in criminal matters wasa assumed--not some novel idea. Jury nullification has been a part of the American Criminal Justice System from the inception of the nation.
