Read My Lips - the blog

Lawman charged in "Fake Drug" case

Well, the Feds indicted the Dallas Police Narcotics Officer who was at the center of the fake drug scheme. He has five misdemeanor counts (violating innocent people's civil rights) and one felony count (lying to an FBI agent) and could spend 10 years in prison if convicted. Three police informants who made thousands of dollars from the police department have already pleaded guilty for their crimes in this matter, and assisted in the investigation against the officer. What is still left to discover in the investigation is whether any of other officers in the matter had knowledge of what was going on or whether any of the officers profited from the money the informants made from the scheme. The investigation is still ongoing, and I suspect there will be several more caught in the net before it is over.

Have you ever considered the cost of being arrested for something of which you were not guilty? Bonds cost money, attorneys cost money, time away from work costs money . . . and yet, seldom does an innocent person recoup their losses after the truth is known. Supposedly we have the best justice system in the world, or that is what we keep being told, but still there are problems with it. Here are my opinions about the biggest problems with the criminal justice system:

• The cost of being charged with a crime you did not commit


• Jurors not taking the presumption of innocence seriously, and voting guilty unless the defendant proves he is actually innocent


• Inadequate payment for juror time so that people want to avoid jury service


• Failure to uniformly design systems which provide juror panels that actually represent the broad range of people in the community


• Legislation of people's morality in situations where no harm is cause to anyone but one's own self


• Increasing corruption of law enforcement officers who are charged with enforcing laws where large amounts of money are involved


• Elected judiciary who have to walk a line between political necessity and concerns of justice


• The economics of the legal education community which is more concerned with the number of attorneys produced than the quality of attorneys produced