Among the findings:
- Of the scores of criminal trials from 2018 to 2021 in which appeals courts found that prosecutors acted improperly, most were for failing to disclose evidence and making inappropriate comments in closing arguments — violations that could have affected the defendants’ ability to get a fair trial. Nearly 80% of the errors were ruled not egregious enough to warrant a reversal, which experts say enables prosecutors to make repeated mistakes with near impunity.
- None of the prosecutors involved in repeated improper-conduct cases was sanctioned by the Ohio Supreme Court, the body ultimately charged with doling out attorney discipline.
- All of the prosecutors found to have repeatedly acted improperly have continued to practice as attorneys, with some moving into more powerful positions, including two who became judges tasked with ensuring fair trials.
This is what it is to be a police state.
It doesn’t necessarily mean brown shirts are going around demanding papers. It means you live in a system where civil rights are valued less than the ability for police to conduct easy investigations.
Civil rights are supposed to bind police. They’re supposed to make the job of the police harder. That is a primary purpose of them. When anyone talks about how much harder the police’s job will be if we have to protect every little right by following every little procedure, that person is asking to live in more of a police state.
I think it’s important to remind people of the historical context behind police states. Ming-dynasty China is considered by many historians as the first real police state.
The Ming court had a secret police force known as the Jinyiwei (“jin-yi-wei”) which had the power to circumvent the Imperial bureaucracy and arrest anyone suspected of a crime. Their power extended to everyone below the emperor, including the imperial family. The Jinyiwei’s investigation findings could overrule judicial proceedings and had complete authority to do almost anything they wanted. It could impose any punishment up to and including death. Don’t look up Chinese execution techniques. It operated in secret, and once the Jinyiwei came for you, you’re as good as dead.
Whether you were a lowly peasant or the Grand Chancellor, if you got wind of the fact that the Jinyiwei was looking into you, you slept with one eye open.
It was peak efficiency, and it wasn’t used solely for fighting crime. Most emperors used it to suppress rivals and it played an important role as a tool for members of the imperial court to use on their enemies and rivals.
That sounds like so-called justice systems from all over the world.
We are failing as a species to give a shit about anyone but ourselves.
