Black and Whitey: How the Feds Disable Criminal Defense

[MachineGhost]

Two remarkable legal proceedings are currently wending their way through the federal criminal courts. The cases involve very different parties: Conrad Black, one of the most consequential public intellectuals and businessmen of our era, and James “Whitey”? Bulger, a Boston-based alleged racketeer and serial murderer. But both cases highlight some of the same profound problems with the way federal prosecutorial business is done these days.

In both cases, as in countless others, the feds have used certain techniques that virtually assure convictions of both the innocent and the guilty, the wealthy and the poor, the violent drug dealer and the white collar defendant, indifferent to the niceties of “due process of law,”? particularly the right to effective assistance of legal counsel. In order to prevent a defendant from retaining a defense team of his choice, federal prosecutors will first freeze his assets, even though a jury has yet to find them to have been illegally obtained. They then bring prosecutions of almost unimaginable complexity, assuring that the financially hobbled defendant’s diminished legal team (or, as is often the case, his court-appointed lawyer) will be too overwhelmed to mount an adequate defense.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilve ... l-defense/

Read comment from sardondi.

[TripleB]

If you're not a criminal, you don't have anything to worry about 

[RuralEngineer]

The only hope for not getting screwed by the justice system is to avoid arrest. Our "justice" system is a cruel joke. The fact that it is still better than many other 1st world nations (see Italy for a good laugh), is all the more depressing. I think reform is suppressed because they pick us off a few at a time.

[MachineGhost]

A good companion to the OP:

Process of law failed on so many accounts in the trial against the two operators of The Pirate Bay, its media spokesperson, and a fourth unrelated person that it’s hard to get a bird’s-eye view. This trial was characterized by first deciding that the operations were criminal, then finding somebody to punish, and finally trying to determine a criminal act they could be held accountable to. In any civilized country where process of law works, the exact reverse order is followed.

http://falkvinge.net/2013/01/06/banana- ... bay-trial/