We've seen how easy it is for any individual to find themselves in the custody of law enforcement... that being law-abiding will not keep you safe.

Now let's look at what can happen after you're in custody.

It may have been different when we had beat cops on foot, who might have even lived in the area their beat covered, but it's clear now that the police mantra "Protect and Serve" doesn't have anything to do with individuals. They may believe they're protecting and serving "society" as a whole, but individuals very often get trampled in that process.

The information I'm going to give to you is unpleasant, to say the least. If your reaction is anything like mine, you'll be tempted to damn the individuals involved in our criminal justice system. Some of them deserve to be damned, but most of those people involved in the system are simply fallible humans trying to do a job... trying to enforce and prosecute the laws as passed by our legislators. What makes their mistakes so disastrous is that they're not supposed to use individual judgement... they're supposed to "go by the book". The "system" they work in has all the faults of a typical governmental bureaucracy, with complex laws, heavy paperwork, regulations, policies, and buck-passing.

Legislators pass laws with little or no thought about the effect they'll have on the criminal justice system, often grandstanding for the voters with claims of "tough on crime". In the U.S., we have a half million people in prison for possession of marijuana. The police could legitimately arrest far more if they chose to, further clogging the courts system and the penal system.

The whole criminal justice system is a damned mess. The War on Drugs has created all kinds of pressures on that system... pressure to take shortcuts, pressure to fall into corrupt practices, pressure to treat individuals as mere numbers to be processed. I urge you to take the time to read the excellent cover article DRUG COURT by Beth Hawkins in the current issue of City Pages, or on the web,  to get a gut-wrenching feel for the frustrated effort by some of those working in the court system.

Once you're in custody, suspected of something, you are not presumed innocent by the police, agents, troopers, etc. It's their job to be suspicious... it's their job to "build a case" if they can, and to do it as quickly as possible. One of the quickest ways is to get a confession.

A police investigator's presumption of a suspect's guilt puts those innocent of crime at greater risk of making false confessions, according to a series of experimental studies by Saul Kassin, professor of psychology and chairman of the legal studies program at Williams College.

Investigators are instructed to isolate suspects, confront them with their guilt with dogged persistence, present false evidence (such as faked hair, blood, or fingerprint specimens, phony witnesses or supposedly failed lie detector tests), put the suspect in a state of helplessness where his denials do not achieve escape for him, and present a palatable alternative that minimizes the crime and makes it seem in the suspect's best interest to make a confession.
What was shocking, Kassin said, was that in the experiment 67 percent of innocent suspects surrendered their rights in the face of clearly hostile interrogations. "They believed in the power of their innocence to set them free".

Once police secure a signed confession prosecutors are prone to trust in them even when exonerating evidence comes to light. "Once in evidence, a confession is for all practical purposes a conviction," Kassin said.

"Criminal defendants in Texas are at the mercy of prosecutors in an unfair system that emphasizes winning rather than justice", says Houston Police Chief C.O. Bradford just this week.

Read about how 5 New York teenagers "confessed" and were convicted of a rape/murder they didn't commit.

There is the incredible story of the Interrogation of 14-year-old Michael Crowe in California. Interrogators almost convinced Michael that he had murdered his sister, and extracted a confession. You can watch some of the taped interrogations and try to imagine how difficult it would be for even an adult, already grieving from a loss, to retain sanity and maintain innocence. Court TV made a movie of the story, titled "Interrogation". The police had in custody the man who almost certainly committed the murder, but ignored him and created an alternate scenario.

Here are a few horror stories from the Justice Project:

Gary Nelson spent eleven years on Georgia's death row, sentenced to death due to aggressive prosecution, bad witness testimony, and incompetent defense. During an appeal trial, the prosecution admitted that "there is no material element of the state's case in the original trial which has not subsequently been determined to be impeached or contradicted."

Gary Gauger, a Wisconsin farmer, was wrongly convicted of murdering his elderly parents. The real murderer was later convicted... after 4 years.

Darby Tillis and Perry Cobb were tried for murder in Cook county, Illinois. The first trial ended in a hung jury. They were tried again, with the same result. In the 3rd trial, they were convicted and sentenced to death. That trial was overturned because of judge error (the judge was later convicted of accepting bribes, and witnesses testified that he was tough on defendants who didn't bribe him. After this 3rd trial, a prosecutor from another county came forward with evidence that 2 other people had done the crime. Nevertheless, Tillis and Cobb were tried a FOURTH time... hung jury... and a FIFTH time, a bench trial, resulted in an acquittal. Even though innocent, Cobb and Tillis were tried more times than any other defendants in the history of the United States, but the other 2 suspects have never been charged.

Kirk Bloodsworth spent nine years in prison before taking a DNA test to prove his innocence. With no prior record and consistently proclaiming his innocence, Mr. Bloodsworth was sentenced to death in 1985 when he was only 22 years old.

Jerry Banks was convicted of two murders and sentenced to death. The Georgia Supreme Court granted a new trial because the prosecution had withheld evidence. He was convicted again, and Supreme Court later denied an appeal. Four years later, another appeal was upheld by the Court because still more evidence had been withheld by the prosecution. The state was about to try him again when they discovered that the primary evidence... shotgun shell casings... had been PLANTED at the crime scene. They were the casings from a test firing of his shotgun. After 6 years, Banks was free. The next year, he committed suicide. His children sued the Sherrif's department for $12 million, and were awarded $150,000.

Verneal Jimerson and Dennis Williams, released after eighteen years after DNA proved they couldn't have done the crime.

Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez, released after eleven years ON DEATH ROW, after DNA proved they couldn't have done the crime.

Randall Dale Adams, released after twelve years, thanks only to an investigation for a documentary film, The Thin Blue Line.

The Innocence Project at the Cardozo School of Law in New York City, which seeks to obtain the release of those wrongly convicted, has so far won reversals in 131 cases on the basis of new DNA evidence. In their first 70 cases, mistaken ID occurred in 61, Police  Misconduct in 38 of them, and Prosecutorial Misconduct in 34.

About 1/3 of the cases where DNA has later been tested have proven the innocence of the convicted person. How many innocent people do you suppose have actually been executed?

There seems to be no end to such stories of innocent citizens being arrested, tried, and convicted. Our legal system is supposed to be designed to work just the opposite way... to take the chance of letting some guilty people go free rather than convicting any innocents. Much of the blame can be laid at the feet of the harsh War on Drugs and War on Terrorism, and it's going to get much worse because of the new, draconian and  UNCONSTITUTIONAL powers being granted in the name of combating terrorism.

Bill Masters is the 23-year Libertarian Sheriff of Telluride, Colorado:

"Legislators need to remember that after they pass a law, any law, the police can arrest the violators, strip-search them, and place them in jail. If the violator resists, the police can beat them, stun-gun them, tear-gas them, seize their property, and shoot them."

 Masters' book "Drug War Addiction" is subtitled "Notes from the front lines of America's #1 policy disaster".

Libertarians have been warning for 30 years now that the U.S. has been moving toward becoming a police state. Anyone who can't see the truth of that by now either isn't paying attention or is deluding themselves.

In June of 2002, the U.S. prison population climbed to over 2 million... that's 1 out of every 142 Americans... that rate is five to eight times higher than other industrialized democracies. In fact, 77 percent of the growth in the number of inmates from 1978 to 2000 involved nonviolent offenses. In all, only about 27.6 percent of male and 14.4 percent of female inmates are violent offenders.

Rep. Ron Paul, one of the few Republicans (and a libertarian) to vote against the USA PATRIOT Act, warned:

 "I think we're on the verge of a very, very tough
police state in this country -- and it will only end
when Americans are fed up."

What each American MUST realize and take to heart is that if we don't change our systems, not one of us is safe from becoming an innocent victim. We MUST get rid of laws that define victimless crimes. We MUST fight against new policing powers such as those granted by the Patriot Act. We cannot afford to give up individual liberties for the false promise of increased safety.

We've BEEN giving up liberties for a long time and our safety hasn't increased one iota because of it.