Derek Chauvin and the Benefits of Public Trials

-

 

I talked with a young soon-to-be law school student this week. He wants to be a trial lawyer, but he is worried there are so few trials. When I started to practice 11% of the Federal cases were resolved by trial. Now, that number is a little over 1%. The same trends are found in state courts all over the country. There are a great many causes I will mention only a few.

    In the criminal area, prosecutors have been given enormous power to negotiate plea dispositions. The judges role has been minimalized by the use of sentencing guidelines that seek uniformity. In the civil area, billion dollar verdicts have made public trials too risky. There are also provisions which are under critical attack at the moment which allow settlements to be secret which have occasionally protected manufacturers producing dangerous products.

    When public trials are followed by the press, reforms become the subject of public discussion, like the Chauvin trial. Companies must explain accusations. Defendants must justify their acts, and reformers use the trial as important symbols leading to needed reforms. Please forgive the cursory nature of this point, there is a lot more to the question of trials but simply put, if we had more public trials like Chauvin we probably could get more reform so desperately needed in our democracy.

    What I find fascinating is a philosopher presently teaching at Yale Hélène Landemore and her book Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of Many, who has devoted her considerable energies to advancing the theory that citizens should have more to do with government than the presently have. She cites a number of examples around the world where citizens were called upon to do one of two things. First, they could study a matter as important as global warming and make recommendations to a legislative body, or second, they could be given the power to enact legislation after study. She maintains a theory supported by many scholars that there is a phenomenon called group intelligence.

    California supported group intelligence with 59% of the voters supporting it when they created the California Redistricting Commission on redistricting, which was composed of 14 citizens from all walks of life who created the assembly senate and congressional districts in California after the 2010 census. Their districts directly became law.

    So I raise the questions again, why are there not more trials? Should there be more trials? Would more trials make for a vibrant democracy?

Mr. Brosnahan tried jury trials for 60 years.

James J Brosnahan Copyright 2021

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The American Establishment Wants to Stop Voter Theft

-
       The business community and the legal community have had enough of the public vote theft. There is a full-page advertisement in the  New York Times  today listing approximately 100 major American corporations and almost all of the large law firms (including Morrison Foerster LLP) in the United States, in opposition to the public voter theft being enacted in several states.      Senator McConnell has overplayed his hand and is now in political trouble. It is often the American establishment that has to step forward and save our democratic form of government. Forty-seven states have pending or enacted statutes with the aim of reducing the vote. Those statutes eviscerate our democratic form of government. The immediate and widespread reaction of citizens was to stop doing business with any company that tolerated voter reduction or theft, and so it should be.      A bill pending in the congress now would establish a bipartisa...
Read more

Senator McConnell Has Inverted the Process of Democratic Discussion by Telling His Base of American Business to Stay Out of Politics

-
  Senator McConnell’s lecturing of American business to stay out of politics was hastily followed by his statement he was not talking about contributions . That lecture represented a reversal of normal political dialogue. In a democracy it is the voters who tell the office holders what they need and what they want. It is not the office holders who instruct the voters as to what they’re allowed to do. Under the First Amendment as declared by the US Supreme Court on several occasions, corporations have a right to express political opinions. Efforts to reduce the vote is among the most important subjects for public discussion. There’s something more important about what McConnell did. He took an axe to the republican base. For a number of years the republican hierarchy has been trying to manage a joining of American business with right-wing groups, some of them with extreme positions. It has been effective at times. But the recent praise by Senator Johnson of Wisconsin, lavished o...
Read more

John F. Kennedy's Speech on Religion - September 12, 1960

-
On Sept. 12, 1960, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy gave a major speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, a group of Protestant ministers, on the issue of his religion. At the time, many Protestants questioned whether Kennedy's Roman Catholic faith would allow him to make important national decisions as president independent of the church. Kennedy addressed those concerns before a skeptical audience of Protestant clergy. The following is a transcript of Kennedy's speech: Kennedy: Rev. Meza, Rev. Reck, I'm grateful for your generous invitation to speak my views. While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that we have far more critical issues to face in the 1960 election: the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers 90 miles off the coast of Florida; the humiliating treatment of our president and vice president by those who no longer respect our power; the hun...
Read more