It’s not often that a judge does the right thing—upholds the law, exposes corruption, or rebukes prosecutors.  In the early days of our nation, it may have been quite common.  Today, however, it’s a rarity.  It’s so rare, in fact, that this is the first in more than fifty posts we’ve published that actually commends actions rather than condemns them.

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.

In a report by the Center for Public Integrity, states were rated and ranked according to their levels of integrity.  Several factors were used in determining each state’s overall grade.  But only one factor actually affects people, although indirectly, on a daily basis—judicial accountability—and is perhaps the most important one.  Since the judicial branch of government is the only one of the three branches that directly “serves” the people on a daily basis, it is the only one wherein having corruption or dysfunction can severely and negatively impact the average person.  The map above reflects the overall integrity score.  When ranking is recalculated based upon judicial accountability, the result literally yields a completely different picture, which is as follows with numeric scores shown:

Try to talk to someone about how a court of law has engineered your financial ruin and, in so doing, has utterly ignored statutory and constitutional imperatives, and it is likely that you will be met with a blank, glazed stare.  After all, America has a good legal system, right?  Say what you will about America’s behavior in the Middle East and that nasty little torture racket at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and goodness knows where else—America’s legal system is…well….it is the best system there is.

Right?

Senator Rand Paul took a lot of heat from establishment Conservatives and some in the media for his unwavering stand against the Patriot Act.  The party line that emerged said that we are now vulnerable to terrorist attack.  Even Senator Paul, himself, said he was being accused of damaging America’s defenses against such attacks.

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.