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Monday, September 23, 2002 |
Justice
This is an interesting one: South Dakota will have an amendment on the ballot on allowing defendants to plead that they are guilty, but that the law is misguided or draconian.This is probably less revolutionary than it is portrayed, in that there is a long history of juries that apparently decide cases on issues other than the strict matter of guilt or innocence (think of acquital of O. J. Simpson, and of the cops in the Rodney King beating). I am cautiously in favor of this option. There are entirely too many cases of prosecutions where the prosecutor says they have to bring the case, the judge says they're just a referee, and the jury says they didn't have a choice beyond deciding the facts, but the result is still obviously unjust to most observers. This cannot possibly be good for a democratic society: if the system is producing unjust results there must be a way of changing it.
A legitimate worry that some lawyers in the article cite is a return to the times when, for example, a white man would not be convicted for killing an American Indian. I'm not convinced by this one: racists and bigots seem to have no problem ignoring the law already.
South Dakota to Vote on Extending Jury Rights
