In other words, when a municipality or locality has a history of police corruption, won't the citizens of the community find it hard to believe just about ANYTHING law enforcement in that community says after a while? Hence, prejudicing a jury to free a real criminal due to "doubt" weather reasonable or unreasonable.
How heavily does corruption weigh on the scales of true justice?
2007-12-13 00:12:47 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics & Government ➔ Law Enforcement & Police
Yes it certainly can and if the corruption goes unchecked it can a heavy influence on juries and the public trust in general.
There are several remedies to keep this thing from happening and to resolve corruption should it start. The agency should have its own internal affairs or professional standards unit that monitors things and answers complaints from the public. If the agency doesn't have this function or this function is corrupt; the state has an oversight group of some sort both for ethical concerns and for criminal corruption. If that should fail; there is also the federal government. The Department of Justice has the ability to oversee agencies that aren't doing a good job of doing their job. Detroit Police came under federal oversight back in 2004 or 2005 for some problems it was having...I don't know if the oversight has yet been removed. Fulton County Sheriff's office (Atlanta) has been having a host of problems in the last couple of years with how it runs the jail. Also, the FBI can investigate civil rights violations committed by corrupt officers and other officials.
Regardless of how it gets resolved, it must be resolved and done so with a heavy hand. The public trust is priceless and cannot be compromised for anyone in any agency. Tarnished badges are unfit to see the light of day.
2007-12-13 03:08:02 · answer #1 · answered by taters_0 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Yes, and there are two things a prosecutor's office must to do combat that problem.
First, they must prosecute and punish police misconduct. (True misconduct is kind of rare-- but every jerk who gets arrested will claim he was beaten or threatened or chained to a it bull or whatever... The trick for prosecutors is to separate the wheat from the chaff.)
Second, when conducting other trials, the prosecutors must use the jury selection process to try to select jurors who have no bias towards police one way or another...
These are the built-in checks and balances that should prevent both the appearance of and the actual occurrences of police misconduct.
2007-12-13 08:28:00 · answer #2 · answered by chocolahoma 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
most definitely, people will have lost trust for the police in that particular area. of course, even if this wasn't the case, there will always be bias in a jury, thats just life.
2007-12-13 08:48:21 · answer #3 · answered by ? 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
absolutely.
2007-12-13 08:17:30 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋