As many people are aware, there have been protests around the country as well as around the world after the brutal and senseless murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Monday, May 25th, 2020.  As the saying goes, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back—after the million other straws underneath it.  The tumult and passion of the past several weeks have forced people to face the uncomfortable realities of our justice system.  These protests are like nothing the United States and the world have ever seen.  The last time anything close to what is currently transpiring happened in the United States was during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

The Numbers are Astounding

The National Registry of Exonerations—a joint project of the University of California/Irvine Newkirk Center for Science & Society, the University of Michigan Law School, and the Michigan State University College of Law—near the end of 2019 included a total of 2,515 individuals who lost a combined 21,000 years of their lives due to wrongful convictions, and these numbers are growing all the time.  The compensation paid to these people is sometimes in the millions, with the total estimated to stand at over $2 billion.

The number of Americans with a criminal history has risen sharply over the past three decades.  Today, nearly one-third of the adult working age population has a criminal record.  In fact, so many Americans have a criminal record that counting them all is nearly impossible.

Have you ever made an unreasonable gesture to a passing horse in a national park?  If so, you are already a federal criminal.  For the rest of us, there’s a new work of reference, humor, and legal theory from attorney Mike Chase titled How to Become a Federal Criminal: An Illustrated Handbook for the Aspiring Offender.

Recent polls confirm that public confidence in legal institutions and lawyers is at historic lows. Gallup’s June 2016 poll indicates that only 36 percent of Americans have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the Supreme Court; and only 23 percent feel that way about the criminal justice system. How do lawyers fare? Only 15 percent of the public has a high degree of confidence in them. The question is where do we go from here and how can public faith in lawyers and the legal system be restored? The simple answer is that it is not going to be a quick or easy fix, but we offer ten thought-provoking solutions below.