bunnny

We need to be real careful before we start asking blanket questions like, "how can our criminal justice system let this happen?" What many people (including myself) sometimes forget, is that we have a system of jurisprudence with a primary objective of protecting those wrongly accused rather than punishing the true perpetrators of any particular crime. Remember, this country was founded upon the rejection of a guilty until proven innocent system that was easily manipulated into a remarkable tool of persecution and prejudice.

As a necessary consequence of this system, the deck is stacked against "the People" or "the State." As you've seen a million times on T.V. or in the movies, the defendnat is innocent until proven guilty. And the quanity of proof that must be established? Proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

As a former prosecutor, I can attest to the fact that this is sometimes an insurmountable task---even when common sense dictates that the defendant is guilty. In fact, sexual assualt cases involving children are without a doubt the SINGLE HARDEST type of cases to prove.

Why? For one, they happen in the shadows. This isn't a lady getting her purse snatched on a busy street, or a liquor store manager getting held up on closed circuit t.v.. This is one victim and one defendant--no witnesses, no cameras, and, quite often, no proof other than the word of the victim. To make matters much worse, nine out of ten times children are awful witnesses--and I don't mean just in sex cases. Children make for horrible witnesses in even the least significant of cases that make it to a jury. Can you imagine what it would be like if you were eight years old in packed courtroom, a big judge in a black robe sitting in the next chair over, and some $400 an hour defense attorney screaming at you? Now imagine the same scenario if the case happened to involve someone sexually assaulting you and you had to intricately detail the parts of his anatomy that entered yours (and the manner in which it was done). You probably wouldn't have done too well, right? I know I wouldn't have.

You may also be wondering about physical evidence. It is very common for children to hide the incident from their parents, and by the time the crime is discovered any and all evidence is gone or completely contaminated.

What is the endgame of all this? Well, prosecutors are very often faced with a dilemma: Go to trial and risk losing (which means NO PUNISHMENT, and the defendant is unleashed into society with no means of checking up on him or inhibiting his conduct) or plead the case out and ensure some degree of punishment and some measure of lifetime monitoring. There really is no better way to do it.

Perhaps one thing that CAN be done is the recruiting of better prosecutors so we can take more risks and go to trial on these cases. Sadly, not unlike with teachers, society doesn't put its money where its mouth is. Although there are constant complaints about the quality of certain prosecutions, most prosecutors start at a salary that many of us could barely survive on (in 2001 I started at $38,500 living in NYC).

So, to come full circle, I'm not sure what happened with Jon Couley--but I'm confident that some of what I mentioned came into play in regard to his prior conviction.

I had to come back and add that I wasn't jumping on what you said. Rather, I was just trying to flesh things out a bit more.


[Edited on Mar 21, 2005 6:40PM]