Wrongful Imprisonment

What is your opinion on wrongful imprisonment? I feel like I've been seeing more and more of this here lately so it has been on my mind.

I have a few more specific questions:

1. Should the prosecutor be punished?

2. What should the punishment be?

3. Do freed peoples deserve to be paid?

4. How much?

5. Should freed peoples be able to sue the courts that imprisoned them wrongfully?

1. No, they do their job to the best of their ability based off the facts and case they have. There's a lot of people involved, not just this person.

2. Not much, I mean it's harsh to say but, it just sucks. I don't think you should punish someone unless you find that they were directly at fault, and even then maybe just suspend or fine them.

3. No, they just were unfortunate to have that happen to them. It's harsh but hopefully they tried to put their time to good use.

4. Nothing.

5. If they can prove that someone was neglectful, then go ahead, but if it was an honest mistake or something out of the ordinary, then no. Not like anything will stop them from trying.

Yes yes yes 10 dollars per day spent in jail yes.

1. No.

2. No.

3. Yes, which is why we do.

4. A lot more than we do.

5. Yes, but only if they were knowingly imprisoned without proper justification.

Imprison all the peoples

-As declared by Queen Kitteh

@xanni15:

I'll use a story I saw recently as an example here. If I'm wrongfully imprisoned for 30 years the court should just say "Our bad. Good luck."? I must say I disagree with that. Unless I read your statements incorrectly

@pperspectiveandreality: If it was intentional or through a careless error, then my answers would change. If it's not then I don't see why you'd punish someone for doing their job, if anything punish the defending attorney. Not really sure what money would, it would seem to me to be a slap in the face: "We messed up, but don't worry we'll give you some money to make it all better".

@xanni15:

Money is the one way they can try to make amends. They can't give the years back or take away the horrible experiences but they can, at the very least, make you economically stable.

*Gets CM Punk to deliver GTS on you*

@pperspectiveandreality: I do understand why you or others might say that, but personally speaking money wouldn't be on my mind, it wouldn't make me less upset or hurt about what happened. When a soldier dies, I doubt their parents would want to be paid by the government, you know? Neither would being angry at someone who might not even work at the same place.

I'd just try to move on as quickly as I could from such a tragic and unfortunate instance.

@xanni15:

I get that but you mentioned moving on. How does one move on? After 30 years in prison the planet, as you knew it, would be gone. A distant memory. Now us there are halfway houses, shelters etc. But why should an innocent person have to go through those same channels as would a criminal? In my opinion monetary compensation, while inevitably insufficient, is still 100% necessary for these wrongfully imprisoned people.

@pperspectiveandreality: No idea, when you find out that answer you let me know. I'm actually struggling beyond anything I ever imagine to move on in my life, and maybe in my situation money would make it better some but I don't think being in prison or 30 years the first thought is going to be anything other than "Can I go home?"

I guess it would depend on the person.

1. Yes; I make that opinion as someone experienced with how the current court system operates. Prosecutor honesty is more of a stereotype than reality. The court system is very corrupt and flaws have been intentionally implanted into the court system to facilitate the corruption; or rather, it could also be looked as the attorneys have found ways to game the system and Congress has not been keeping up; Congress' number one function should be as a check of the Judicial System.

The number one flaw is that a defense attorney has to rely on the honesty of the prosecutor. For example, evidence to defend a defendant (or plaintiff) has to pass through the prosecutor before the defense attorney ever sees the evidence; the majority of the time, court cases turn on very close calls; because the issue is a close call, the prosecutor has every incentive to conceal evidence from the defense attorney to win his case, as it's a close call (e.g. this is where a seemingly major issue can form where someone who was innocent had spent 25 years in prison or someone who was wrongfully terminated has been out of work for 10 years); the environment is very competitive and attorneys have actually developed the mindset that the matter is a competition for who wins and who loses; the attorneys are very numb to the fact that someone's life or livelihood is at stake (e.g. someone facing the death penalty or facing the prospects of a job loss, with little prospects of gaining future employment). Rest assure that wrongful imprisonment is quite common and routine, despite how it seems, although less routine than a wrongful termination, since attorneys view the process as a competition (e.g. every prosecutor would like to have that reputation of 200 wins to 2 losses so that they can seek the district attorney's office or gain political office; likewise, an assistant district attorney wants the same reputation of having successfully defended the agency from 200 lawsuits for reinstatement and punitive damages, versus no loses). Because of this high competition environment, very egregious things go on behind the scenes. The number one advantage a prosecutor has is the judge's and court staff's ear to manipulate the court proceedings as they wish, so that someone without legal representation has almost no hope of success. The posters that say otherwise probably have no actual or personal experience with the legal system.

2. Any attorney found to have concealed any type of evidence should be sanctioned, depending upon the circumstances of the case, up to disbarment.

3. Yes, depending upon how egregious the circumstances, the innocent should be compensated and the wrongfully discharged from employment given punitive damages and placed back to work in a substantially similar position, if with a different agency or company.

4. Could be hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars as a way to deter dishonesty in the legal system.

5. A fix for this issue requires extensive intervention by Congress, from several new laws to doing away with court decisions that tends to cause the court system to rely upon the honesty of prosecutors and judges, to perhaps a Constitutional Amendment. The matter could be further fixed by increasing the funding for the courts to substantially increasing the number of judges, from a lower court, all the way up to the Supreme Court (e.g. increasing the number of Justices from 9 to perhaps 27, at a minimum, along with at least triple the staff currently at the Supreme Court office). The reform should probably involve imposing term limits upon judges; the process for selecting a judge should also be a lot less political; the courts need a place where aggrieved parties, who faced an adverse decision to vet their frustrations, with a realistic chance of effecting change, up to a retry of their case with court appointed legal representation; a close watch should be kept on this body to reduce the chances that attorneys are able to game this system; court staff and judges should be properly sanctioned for having been found to have conceal evidence of any type, with a zero tolerance for any and all types of ex parte communication; all controversial court decisions in the areas of ex parte communication and judges' bias should be given a thorough examination, where the standard of finding a violation is substantially reduced; discovery requests being passed through the prosecutor or agency representative should be completely abolished, where the party requesting discovery have simultaneous access to the facilities necessary to gather the discovery documents; there should be no delay of even minutes for a party to submit his/her discovery requests and have immediate access to the location of the discovery documents; rulings related to discovery by courts should also be examined for reform. The judicial and administrative systems need substantial reform.

1. No, unless it was revealed that they were corrupt or knew he/she was innocent and still put them into prison.

2. For the corrupt people (and I have never actually heard of a case where a lawyer purposely put someone in prison) put them in the prison for a year or 2 and have their license revoked.

3. Heck yes. If anyone says no, then they can go to prison for 20 years while your family thinks your murdered or raped a 6 year old girl. Unless you were in prison for like, a week....of course, if you were still harmed (raped, stabbed, etc) then you should still get paid.

4. I don't know, but a lot. At least 10 dollars a day. Or just give them a total of $500,000- a million. Is that a lot of money? Yes, it is. However, I am sure that everyone is happy to lose that money in taxes to actually help someone in need... yes, I am serious.

5. No, as they are getting paid. However, if they aren't getting paid, I say bring on the pain lol. I would sue about everyone lol

@aquaman01:

If you were in jail for 30 years getting paid $10 a day you would have about 30 grand. That's a fraction of what I believe people should be paid

Hey, I am with ya. I honestly said 10 dollars because another poster said it lol I didn't do the calculations or anything. Yeah, they should get hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions. I mean, there is literally no excuse to convict an innocent person these days. I can only name a few circumstances where I would understand how an innocent got into prison.

@aquaman01:

Nope...my bad. Bad math. It'd be about 110,000 but still.....not enough