Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1787 that "The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them."
Sunday, March 9, 2008
The Right to a Speedy Trial?
Should the state of Maine suspended all criminal trials for six weeks starting on April 1st? Is this an acceptable solution to help solve the budget crisis? Why or why not?
10 comments:
Anonymous
said...
I don't see how this is going to "save" money. If I decide not to do the routine maintenance on my vehicle to save money, eventually it's going to catch up to me, my engine will fail and it will cost even more money. The courts need to run , if they don't, cases are just going to back up even further. If we suspend the trials, then eventually someone may sue the state for not having access to a speedy trial, more money paid out by the state. We need more "realistic" ways to cut our expenditures. Maybe we should stop plowing the roads, send all the police home for a couple days, let all the murderers and repists out of prison for a couple of months or even do a "Fidel Castro" and ship them to Cuba.
Looking at this article I see how they courts will "save money" however I don’t think this is the way to go about that. That to me is too big of a gap to not have the courts running. Once the courts get back in session all those cases that are left to wait will need to be done on top of all the new cases. I would think that this would still cost as much money as we saved during the six week period and would also result in tight court scheduling. This is a good way to cause our “sue-happy” society to sue the state for not being able to have a speedy trial.
Insanity... Once again the governmnet is trying to pull a fast one. The money is already spent, it is only a matter of do we spend it in april and may or do we shut down the courts and spend it beginning in june and spend more on the law suits for the people whose rights we violate. It is like saying you are saving money by not paying this months light bill till next month.
Like everybody else, I also don't see any savings here. This is where the snowball begins, and where it ends, who knows. It's all relative. Just like putting anything off to a later date, it's gonna be that much harder to deal with the product of a decision like this in the long run.
I think this is a temporary fix for a much bigger problem. It doesn't 'save' money, it is just pushing the spending off till another time. When we experience a budget shortfall in the next fiscal year the same problem will still exist. Not to mention Americans have the right to a speedy trial. Perhaps the Governor should look at cutting administrations or having state and legislative employees contribute to their health insurance costs along with state legislators. KR
The issue isn't "saving" money, it's transferring the cost to another time period thus not spending it in the current time. This happens often in state government where a bill is paid July 1 instead of June 30 thereby putting the expense in the new fiscal year and "saving" the cost in the prior one. Pretty simple concept.
I don't think this system is going to work. I don't think we are going to save any money at all. It might look like we will now but i think in the long run we will have to spend more. I think this because there are more people going to court now for committing crimes that six weeks won't be long enough time. So we will have to go to court more often to make sure everyone goes to jail like they need to do. DLL
This suspension of all criminal trials in early spring would actually affect me as I have a criminal trial in early spring. I don't see this helping anything except creating a bottle neck for the rest of the year like they said. These cases are going to go to court at one time or another, and jumbling all the cases towards the end of the year is only unfair to the accused. The court will have less time, and that mean less time for moderating with defendants and searching for plea deals. I am opposed to this action by the state.
It's not a wonder why the only people crying about this are defense attorneys and advocates for criminals. The people who are complaining about this being a violation of our constitutional rights are the same ones who would argue that Richard Dwyer (The idiot who raped, robbed and murdered a defenseless woman in town recently) might be innocent because the dna found on one article of evidence proves that the killer may have been one out of about one hundred fifty people, although two or three other pieces of evidence says that the dna could only belong to one person out of over 36 billion people ( I believe.) The state is not talking about delaying trials for six months. They are talking about six weeks. I certainly don't care if there is a possible way that this will save us money. I doubt there are too many innocent people sitting in our state's jails if any. They can all wait to go to trial. If this actually saves us money, I hope everyone feels silly afterward for opposing it.
10 comments:
I don't see how this is going to "save" money. If I decide not to do the routine maintenance on my vehicle to save money, eventually it's going to catch up to me, my engine will fail and it will cost even more money. The courts need to run , if they don't, cases are just going to back up even further. If we suspend the trials, then eventually someone may sue the state for not having access to a speedy trial, more money paid out by the state. We need more "realistic" ways to cut our expenditures. Maybe we should stop plowing the roads, send all the police home for a couple days, let all the murderers and repists out of prison for a couple of months or even do a "Fidel Castro" and ship them to Cuba.
SJB
Looking at this article I see how they courts will "save money" however I don’t think this is the way to go about that. That to me is too big of a gap to not have the courts running. Once the courts get back in session all those cases that are left to wait will need to be done on top of all the new cases. I would think that this would still cost as much money as we saved during the six week period and would also result in tight court scheduling. This is a good way to cause our “sue-happy” society to sue the state for not being able to have a speedy trial.
JAL
Insanity... Once again the governmnet is trying to pull a fast one. The money is already spent, it is only a matter of do we spend it in april and may or do we shut down the courts and spend it beginning in june and spend more on the law suits for the people whose rights we violate. It is like saying you are saving money by not paying this months light bill till next month.
PAW
Like everybody else, I also don't see any savings here. This is where the snowball begins, and where it ends, who knows. It's all relative. Just like putting anything off to a later date, it's gonna be that much harder to deal with the product of a decision like this in the long run.
Steve L
I think this is a temporary fix for a much bigger problem. It doesn't 'save' money, it is just pushing the spending off till another time. When we experience a budget shortfall in the next fiscal year the same problem will still exist. Not to mention Americans have the right to a speedy trial. Perhaps the Governor should look at cutting administrations or having state and legislative employees contribute to their health insurance costs along with state legislators.
KR
The issue isn't "saving" money, it's transferring the cost to another time period thus not spending it in the current time. This happens often in state government where a bill is paid July 1 instead of June 30 thereby putting the expense in the new fiscal year and "saving" the cost in the prior one. Pretty simple concept.
I don't think this system is going to work. I don't think we are going to save any money at all. It might look like we will now but i think in the long run we will have to spend more. I think this because there are more people going to court now for committing crimes that six weeks won't be long enough time. So we will have to go to court more often to make sure everyone goes to jail like they need to do.
DLL
This suspension of all criminal trials in early spring would actually affect me as I have a criminal trial in early spring. I don't see this helping anything except creating a bottle neck for the rest of the year like they said. These cases are going to go to court at one time or another, and jumbling all the cases towards the end of the year is only unfair to the accused. The court will have less time, and that mean less time for moderating with defendants and searching for plea deals. I am opposed to this action by the state.
It's not a wonder why the only people crying about this are defense attorneys and advocates for criminals. The people who are complaining about this being a violation of our constitutional rights are the same ones who would argue that Richard Dwyer (The idiot who raped, robbed and murdered a defenseless woman in town recently) might be innocent because the dna found on one article of evidence proves that the killer may have been one out of about one hundred fifty people, although two or three other pieces of evidence says that the dna could only belong to one person out of over 36 billion people ( I believe.) The state is not talking about delaying trials for six months. They are talking about six weeks. I certainly don't care if there is a possible way that this will save us money. I doubt there are too many innocent people sitting in our state's jails if any. They can all wait to go to trial. If this actually saves us money, I hope everyone feels silly afterward for opposing it.
oct 9th 1:20am comment from fecteau
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