Word: convicted
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...exemplary conduct in jail warranted his parole. But last week that same judge reversed himself, arguing that Mesbah, 28, was better off behind bars. Early release, the magistrate reasoned, would make Mesbah a victim of France's double peine - a "double jeopardy" law allowing the deportation of foreign convicts once they've done their time. Mesbah's case has provoked renewed outcries for the abolition of double peine, which affects thousands of forgotten foreign convicts each year, most of them of North African descent. Mesbah, like so many others in his predicament, was raised, educated and spent most...
...moment, Tse is wearing another unfashionable uniform: that of a convict in the Hong Kong penal system. A judge last week found him guiltyof "conspiracy to commit perversion of public justice," a fancy way of saying Tse tried to weasel out of an embarrassment and, in doing so, committed a crime...
South Dakota voters are currently considering whether to allow individual juries to acquit criminal defendants accused of violating laws deemed “misguided or draconian.” This power, known as jury nullification, would base criminal convictions on juries’ judgment not only on the facts of a case, but on the soundness of the law broken. Under the proposed Amendment A, to be voted on during the November elections in South Dakota, individual defendants could confess their guilt but ask for acquittal by arguing that the laws violated were misguided. Juries would then decide whether...
...different time. The overcrowded justice system prevents many of these laws from being overturned, as more pressing cases take up the limited time of lawyers and judges alike. In practice, police and prosecutors rarely enforce outdated statutes dealing with small issues. Likewise, some juries will inevitably decide not to convict a defendant they know to be guilty—due to extenuating circumstances, belief that the law broken was unjust or any number of reasons. Relying on individual citizens to judge cases, with all the variation of opinion that implies, means that the legal system will never dispense perfect justice?...
When juries usurp the role of the legislature by deciding the wisdom of a law, there can be terrible consequences—exemplified by the refusal of some Southern juries to convict defendants for lynching blacks in the late nineteenth century. Jury nullification undermines the fairness of the legal system by making the enforcement of what should be a uniform standard of conduct dependent only on the opinion of a 12-member jury—without any accountability to the citizenry at large. South Dakota’s proposed Amendment A circumvents the democratic judicial process, and should be voted...