Getting Away With Murder, etc.

Criminal justice: why criminals go unpunished

CRIMINALS GO UNPUNISHED, MAINLY FOR REASONS OTHER THAN CIVIL LIBERTIES OR SYMPATHY FOR THE POOR

 Why Criminals Go Unpunished
Why do people get away with murder and other crimes? Reason number one, the major reason, is that people who commit crimes usually try to do it in a way so they won’t get caught. In the dark. When no one else is around who could arrest them or identify them. When they can quickly leave the scene. The criminal who plans a crime and isn’t very stupid will have a good chance of getting away with the crime, with no one suspecting who did it. Justice Department statistics show that robbery connected homicides are less likely to result in arrest than homicides connected to arguments, which tends to uphold my theory. In any event, the main reason people get away with serious crimes is lack of any kind of proof, not as some people suppose, judges who are overzealous in protecting civil rights. (Statistics for 1995 for robbery, burglary and theft show only 17.6% were closed out by police by arrest according to Table 4.20 of “Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1996”, the latest I could find in New York City’s Forty-second Street Library when I last looked. The 17.6% figure doesn’t apply to murder, presumably because murders are frequently motivated by emotion, which is supported by other statistics. The same book says that in 1995 45.41 of victims of murder and non-negligent homicide were known to be related to or acquainted with their assailants. Arguments resulted in 27.57 of the murders and non-negligent homicide and 18.21% were believed or suspected to have resulted from felonious activities such as robbery, arson, etc. It is likely that many of the argument-caused homicides as well as those caused by romantic triangles and by other causes not related to independent felonies were not planned in advance. In the category of unknown murder circumstance 79.35 % of the perpetrators were categorized as having an unknown relationship with the victim, which doesn’t includedthose categorized as strangers. I assume these are mainly cases in which no one was arrested.)
However, there is a second type of situation in which the police will suspect a person or persons of a crime and will themselves commit a crime to try to get evidence against the suspects. The suspects, like you and me, have not been convicted of the crime. Yet it sometimes happens that the police will take it upon themselves to break into their homes, beat them to try to get a confession, or otherwise deprive them of the rights we are all entitled to. It is obvious to most people that no one should have the arbitrary power to deprive people of their rights. But what if a police officer, unable to get a search warrant, breaks into a suspect’s home anyway and gets lucky, finding evidence of murder or some other crime. Should evidence obtained by the police illegally be used against the subject?
Most Americans know that our laws do not allow such evidence to be used against the suspect. As far back as 1936 the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the conviction of a state court that was based solely on a confession beaten out of the defendant by a law enforcement officer and others. The defendant had been severely whipped and told the whipping would continue until he confessed. The Court’s opinion (Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278, 1936) was written by Chief Justice Hughes who, by the way, was so staunch a Republican that he had been selected by the Republican Party to run for President in 1916.
Situation three is the one in which White, our hypothetical defendant, had been suspected of having committed a crime, there is insufficient evidence to get a search warrant, but the police break into White’s house and find incriminating evidence. Such action is clearly illegal, but it is not as barbaric as torture. If you came home and found your place had been illegally searched you would not like having to spend the effort to put things back in place. Moreover, you would have to be a very unusual person not to disturbed beyond that dislike. However, most people would dislike a severe beating even more than that. So, in 1961 when The Supreme Court, in the case of Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961),decided that state courts may not admit such illegally obtained evidence, it was going further than it had in the Brown case in enforcing the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Chief Justice then was Earl Warren, another Republican, but the highest national officehis party ever nominated him for was Vice President. (In California, he had been elected Governor and to lesser offices.)
But this doesn’t answer the question because it is possible to reduce our protection against misconduct by officials and still not go to the extremes of tyranny that exist in police states. I bring up the comparison to the Soviet Union because the domestic critics of our civil 1iberties frequently phrase their criticisms in a way that applies to our most basic liberties. Some people say they are tired of hearing about the rights of criminals, and are concerned with the rights of law abiding citizens. Such criticism begs the question. Until one is fairly convicted he or she should be considered to be an ordinary law abiding citizen.
When someone berates the judicial system that let a suspect out on bail because the suspect later committed, or is thought to have committed, another crime, that person would have suspects rot in jail indefinitely without ever having undergone any kind of trial. And when a newscaster thoughtlessly says a suspect was released because of a technicality, even if the technicality is based on the most fundamental principles of fairness, and does not explain what that technicality is, that newscaster gives people the impression that we release criminals for insubstantial reasons.
Some police officers would beat up suspects to get confessions. By excluding those confessions we deter illegal acts. The exclusion of the evidence probably is more effective in deterring crime in the station house than the admission of the evidence would be in deterring crime in the streets. The criminal who plans a crime intends never to be apprehended or even suspected, so the news of one person being convicted is unlikely to deter another criminal. On the other hand, if the police beat a confession out of a suspect it makes no difference which officer beat the suspect, the confession is still inadmissible, and the police know that.
The principle that laws, not officials, should govern us is very important. It is a foundation of our governmental system that all officials are required to obey the law and may not do whatever they want.
One mark of true conservatives is that they usually support the Constitution against government officials who try to assert powers not rightfully theirs.
Some people think that defendants convicted of serious crimes get mere slaps on the wrists because the trial judges buy the argument ofdefendants’ 1awyers that disadvantaged people should not be held fully responsible for their acts. I don’t believe that judges behave that way. I believe the plea “He comes from a good home” is more effective in producing light sentences than “He comes from a poor, broken home.” After all, judges, being well off financially, are more likely to empathize with defendants or their relatives who are well off than with those who are not.
Nor do I know what the source is of the belief of some people that pleas of impoverished people are effective in getting light sentences for violent criminals. Perhaps it’s the movies of the thirties that showed defense lawyers requesting leniency for young men because of their poverty. Remember, in the thirties many were unemployed or underemployed, so producers would make pictures about poor people, hoping audiences would sympathize with them. (Actual judges, of course, still consisted mainly of people appointed or elected in previous decades.) Movies are not the same as the real world. If there’s any proof that being or having been poor makes people more likely to get away with crimes, I would like to see it.