9 Costly Misconceptions About the Criminal Justice System and You

MISCONCEPTION #1: The Truth Will Set You Free. Hardly! If you really believe this, you’re in deep trouble already.

MISCONCEPTION #2: The system is fair. NOT! The criminal statutes, case law, and court rules are skewed in favor of the Prosecution.

MISCONCEPTION #3: Judges are neutral. Wrong. Judges tend to be pro-Prosecution and rule in favor of the State whenever an evidentiary ruling is close. This varies from judge to judge, but overall, the judge is not your friend.

MISCONCEPTION #4: Police conduct thorough investigations before charges are filed. That’s a laugh! For everything but serious violent crimes like murder, the investigation pretty much ends within a few hours of the alleged crime. Witnesses do short, one page statements, the cops seldom look for witnesses who aren’t readily available, and the detectives do very little follow up or review of the crime scenes.

MISCONCEPTION #5: Prosecutors make informed, fair charging decisions. To begin with, Prosecutors make charging decisions based only on the documents sent to them by the cops. Prosecutors cannot conduct any follow up investigation on their own if they have ques-tions, and they virtually never ask the detective who referred the case to do any additional work.

Also, Prosecutors in big counties have lots of cases waiting to be filed. As a result, they are inclined to spend only a short amount of time reviewing the police reports before making a charging decision because their desks are piled high with other cases to review.

MISCONCEPTION #6: Illegally obtained evidence will be thrown out by the Court. By and large, judges don’t like throwing out evidence because doing so often guts the Prosecution’s entire case. Many judges will engage in mental gymnastics to come up with obscure and non-sensical reasons to allow inadmissible evidence into trial because they know they are not likely to be reversed on appeal.

MISCONCEPTION #7: You will be tried by a jury of your peers. Well, if you’re a young defendant of color, in King County your “peers” will be older or retired white middle class people who have no idea what it’s like to grow up in your neighborhood or your culture. Your jury with have different cultural values, and will be from a completely different generation in terms of age.

MISCONCEPTION #8: The Burden of Proof is entirely on the Prosecution, and the defense does not even have to present a defense. Theoretically, true; practically, nonsense. While the constitution places the “burden” of proof on the Prosecution, jurors expect to see a defense put forward by defense counsel. This is particularly true if the defendant does not testify; while jurors will acknowledge that a defendant does not have to testify because of his/her 5th Amendment Rights, they will still want to “hear his side” and will be suspicious of the defendant if he does not volunteer to testify.

MISCONCEPTION #9: If you are convicted, you may still appeal to the Court of Appeals. True. But less than 8%of criminal appeals ever result in reversals.