- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
If you want an eerily similar (although obviously less extreme) real-life example, look at Japan's justice system.Forgiving the descent into fiction as political comparison, but what they want is Cardassian-style justice. We've brought this up a few times before in the thread, but there's an episode of Deep Space Nine where O'Brien is put on trial by the Cardassians, and his "advocate" explains how trials there work. The guilty verdict has already been decided before he was ever taken into custody, because after all what sort of abominable justice system would arrest an innocent person? The following extremely public trial is merely to let everyone feel good about the predetermined outcome... it's not about proving anything, judging anything, the state has already made that decision in private and no one needs to know about it because how could the state be wrong? So they get up, they put on a show, the populace nods along and everyone feels good about themselves as the predetermined verdict is read.
Fiction, sure, but doesn't it sound eerily like what they were openly declaring and demanding from Trump's impeachment? "We don't need evidence, we know he's guilty." "He's been impeached, that proves he's guilty." "Why would we need a vote, we know he's guilty." "The senate committed a crime because we know he's guilty."
What Trump "ruined" was the show, the event, the spectacle. He was supposed to collapse wailing and beg forgiveness for his predetermined guilt, throw himself on the mercy of the state, and weep bitterly as he was beheaded live on television. But he just had to go and ruin it by being innocent.
(That's all in general, don't sperg at me.) They won't charge you with a crime if they aren't 100% certain they'll get it to stick. But if they do charge, good fucking luck defending yourself or getting an appeal. Acquittals look bad on the justice system (same reason as the Cardassians: "a functioning justice system would never charge an innocent person"), so even if you are innocent if they're charging you you're going to jail. No ifs, no buts, and the appeals system is a nightmare with a very low rate of sentences being overturned.
It's not as cartoonish as the Star Trek example, but it really gives you a better appreciation of the American justice system, as fucked as it may be.