America’s Criminal Justice System is Second Rate.

America’s criminal justice system is second rate.


“I can get the Grand Jury indict a ham sandwich,” I heard a lawyer brag. . That is because it is the prosecutor is in charge of the grand jury. There is no judge and what happens is kept secret. The target of the grand jury doesn't have a right to call witnesses. . New York requires that exculpatory evidence must be presented however.

I would like New York State to do away with the Grand Jury. I would like it replaced with a hearing before a judge with the right of the defense to present witnesses and cross examine the police on how they conducted their investigation. Most cases where a person is later freed involve a forced:”confession.”

The Grand Jury has been around sine 1166 when King Henry II used it to consolidate his kingdom. Britain did away with the Grand Jury because of abuse in 1933. All other countries did away with the Grand Jury. The only exception is the United States. Today only about one half of all states in the United States have the Grand Jury system. Once an indictment is secured the prosecution holds the upper hand.

After serving years in jail Frank Sterling of Rochester was freed from prison by Donald M. Thompson, Esq. with the help of the Innocents Project. Frank Sterling was convicted for the November 29, 1988 murder of 74 year old Viola Manville in Hilton, New York. In fact Mark Christy, who was later arrested for the 1994 murder of Kali Ann Poulton murdered Manville. He was questioned as a suspect in the Manville murder in 1988, but then Sterling became the police target. “There’s no question in this case the police officers had tunnel vision,” said Innocence Project co-founder Peter Neufeld. Innocence Project officials contend that investigators became too fixated on Sterling and ignored other possibilities. . In an appellate brief, in fact, Thompson once wrote that “any reasonable view of the evidence would have supported the conclusion that (Sterling) would be free and Mark Christie would be serving time for not one murder, but two.”

I believe the power to indict should be taken away from the prosecutors and the police and given to a judge where witnesses can be cross examined and where the defendant has the right of council.

Grant Dinehart Langdon