76-07-A5
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Crime II
TranscriptOur criminal justice system was carefully designed to eliminate excesses and abuses by those in authority so as to guarantee fair treatment of the accused. The presumption of innocence is taken for granted. The law must prove guilt "beyond reasonable doubt". With crime a threat to us in our homes and on the streets it begins to seem as if someone has crossed out that word "reasonable". In our desire to guarantee the rights of the accused, our courts seem to be less concerned with determining guilt or innocence than with conducting a contest between lawyers in which victory will be determined on the basis of skill in procedural matters and legal technicalities. There is the Exclusionary Rule. This is not a law. No legislature, after due deliberation, adopted it for our betterment. It is what is called, "case law". Somewhere along the line a judge ruled that evidence obtained by illegal methods could not be introduced against a defendant. That seems fair enough and definitely an extension of our protection against unwarranted use of police power. But, now somehow the word "reasonable" has been lost in the invoking of this precedent. A policeman stops a car for a traffic violation and finds a bundle of illegal heroin on the front seat of the car. He has apprehended a dope peddler, but because he stopped him for a traffic violation he has to pretend the heroin doesn't exist. Just recently the journal called Human Events, which consistently brings news often overlooked by the daily press, told of a case where justice may be thwarted. A young man was arrested for molesting a girl in a department store. By coincidence the police were trying to solve the case of a seven-year-old girl who had been stolen from her home in the night, raped and murdered. Questioning the young man about the department store incident, after he had been duly apprised of his rights, a state policeman who was present heard him use the nickname of the seven-year-old murdered girl and asked, "How did you get her out of the house?" To their astonishment he simply replied he had carried her out. He then proceeded to tell them he had raped and strangled her. He was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment. Now, however, there is a possibility he -- a confessed rapist and murder -- may go free. His lawyer invoking a legal precedent known in the trade as "Miranda", the name of another confessed murderer who went free because he had not been told of his right to have a lawyer present during questioning, claims his client should have had his rights repeated to him before he was questioned about the second case. What makes even less sense is his lawyer's contention that the police took advantage of his client's low intelligence. As Human Events puts it, we are evidently supposed to infer that our criminal justice system is unfair if the police happen to be more intelligent than our friendly, neighborhood child molester. It is time to restore to practical use the word "reasonable" and garnish it with common sense. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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