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By RAYNER V. SNEAD
Rappahannock News Contributing Writer
Anyone who was dismayed or disappointed by the O.J. Simpson trial or who has doubts or reservations about our criminal justice-system should read Guilty: The Collapse of Criminal Justice a book by Judge Harold J. Rothwax, a trial judge of New York for twenty-five years.
This is not the railing at the system by a conservative or right wing partisan but a vivid description of criminal justice’s defects and ills by an observer who, before he became judge, was a defense attorney and member of the American Civil Liberties Union.
In recounting criminal cases he has tried and other renowned cases, his theme is that our system allows and encourages defendants and their attorneys to evade, ignore and subvert the truth. The system handicaps the prosecution from the time of arrfest to the verdict and beyond. It may be compared to a mile race between two runners in which the runner representing the defense is given a hundred yard advantage over the prosecution.
For over one hundred and fifty years of our history police officers were allowed to question suspects and use their statements in court if these statements or confessions were not coerced. Now under the Miranda case, and interpretation of the 5th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by the Supreme Court of the United States a police officer who has a defendant in custody must carefully explain to him his constitutional rights to remain silent, to have an attorney, to have an attorney appointed if he cannot afford one, that any statement he makes can and will be used against him. Absent such a warning, custodial confessions, no matter how voluntary, will be excluded if the case goes to
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