GUILTY NY - Jose Martinez, 44, New York City, 22 Nov 1986

[KaaBoom]

Due process has nothing to do with lapse of time since crime was committed. It's the lapse of time from arrest until trial. This murder was arrested but never had a trial. It's our constitutional right to a speedy trial after being charged. He is free because trying him in court so many years after his arrest (not years after crime committed) violates his constitutional rights.

I understand that but, I would argue due process does apply. That you can't have due process after so much time has passed.

 

[KaaBoom]

Sure. We're not talking about minor offenses but of murders. It is necessary to send the message that if someone commits murder will always be pursued. That like his act is irreversible for the victim, will be irreversible for him.

Personally I don't like prisons or paying for them with my tax money. But they do one very good thing. They remove certain very dangerous people from society, which makes things safer for the rest of us. For that reason I can live with paying taxes for them. But if you lock an old man up for a crime he committed as a teenager, it's not making society any safer. It's just a waste of tax money. Which I don't want to pay for. Especially since the US already has more prisoners locked up then any other country in the world.

 

[Nova]

Sure. We're not talking about minor offenses but of murders. It is necessary to send the message that if someone commits murder will always be pursued. That like his act is irreversible for the victim, will be irreversible for him.

I think we all agree. But the time to have pursued the murderer was in the late 1980s.

Imagine if there were no such right to a speedy trial. The government could arrest anyone it disliked and then simply leave him under the threat of imprisonment with no chance to prove his innocence. What a chilling effect that would have on dissent!

Like most "technicalities" that free the accused (and it doesn't happen as often as TV shows would suggest), the right to a speedy trial protects all of us, not just the guilty.