Housed: US Federal Penitentiary, Tucson
Inmates because of their incarceration, have lost the favor of being a citizen. Many people believe that anyone in prison is the “worst of the worst” and thus deserves any hardships they receive.
To counter that, you’d have to believe that the US judicial process is perfect: that EVERY person convicted was done so fairly. I ask, do you believe EVERY person sentenced was done fairly? Do you truly believe the judicial system is 100% accurate or merciful? We’ve established that the judicial system isn’t perfect, now are you willing to believe that sometimes people are falsely accused? If even ONE case shows that an inmate was falsely accused, then the belief stands that every inmate deserves to be re-examined. I’m not saying every inmate got robbed of justice; to be sure, many people need to be here. But I’d like you to consider that many times, the courts get it wrong for two basic reasons: one, human error, and two with malice. There’s a common term used in the inmate appeal process called “Ineffective Assistance of Counsel”. What does that mean? Often, especially in federal courts, the accused is assigned a public defender, who is supposed to represent the accused. The problem is that the public defender works for the court, not the accused. That person gets paid whether they win their case or not. Public defenders don’t get a penny more for properly defending the accused. If they have ten clients, none of them paying, do you really think they will spend 30 hours a week on a guy sitting in jail, when he or she has nine other identical cases, NONE of which is going to net them an extra dollar? Public defenders often don’t give their client their best effort, basically going through the motions, leading the accused to take a plea, making their workload easier. The accused gives up on his rights or if they take it to court, gets the minimal help. Only when he gets to prison, after he’s found guilty, does he find out the critical errors his public defender made that could have saved him, or at least reduced his sentence… thus ineffective assistance of counsel. Many guys in prison didn’t get a fair trial, so have a little compassion
