CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
It's not a crime until you are convicted...
While I am in favor of the death penalty, that discussion is not the intention of these comments.  These comments are directed more to the steps leading up to the designation of the punishment.  How many times have the media detailed the ability of the criminal to evade prosecution because of a technicality?  How many times have you heard the phrase on TV - 'Read him his rights'?  How many times have you failed to see the authority turn to the victim and explain their rights?

Thanks to the failure of the courts and the imagination of lawyers, the legal system has been stuck in a quagmire of defendants' rights, failing to take into account whether the crime was actually committed.  This was brought to the headlines and the forefront of the media by the first lawyer that took the well-known Miranda case to the Supreme Court.  Due to this case, the police were placed in the position of, first, protecting the civil rights of the suspect, and, second, protecting the rights of the victim.  This case forced the lower courts to allow any violations of the defendants' civil rights to have a bearing on the truth about an actual crime.  This is the problem.  If you want to commit a crime, make sure that the evidence can be tainted or your rights violated and you can get off because the courts no longer care about whether or not the law was actually broken.

Here is my brief review of the problem.  The courts have failed to separate the components of the case between the criminal activity and the civil rights of the suspect.  Notice that I completely eliminated the civil rights of the victim since that was never considered important by the courts in determining guilt or innocence.  When the first court allowed the concept of the civil rights of the suspect to enter the discussion in any form, then the door was opened to allow the full criminal conviction to be eliminated.  The court has failed to recognize that the violation of the civil rights of the suspect does not alter the fact that the suspect committed a crime.  These issues need to be considered in separate cases and the outcome of one should not be dependant on the outcome of the other.  The courts need to return to the concept of separation to, first, determine if a crime has been committed, and, second, is there any compensation that the criminal deserves if the civil rights were violated.

So the question is how to resolve the problem.  Step one is for the courts to dismiss from any criminal proceedings any issue regarding the civil rights of the defendant in terms of treatment or evidence.  The court must first decide if a crime was committed and if so, the punishment of the crime.  If there were civil rights violations, then the criminal will have the right to pursue those conditions in a civil suit, in much the same way that anyone can sue anyone else today.  However, here is the good part.  The lawsuits against the authorities cannot be filed or judged until the full sentence of the criminal has been paid.  In addition, there are already specific statutes of limitations on civil suits.  If the statute of limitations is 7 years for a specific civil violation that the judge believes will come up after the case is over then the judge gives a minimum sentence of 7 years and 1 day, part of which can be suspended.  In this case, the criminal will pay the price for the crime, which is a component of criminal law, and the criminal can pursue civil actions against the authorities after 'the debt to society has been paid', which is a component of civil law. 

Using this method, the criminal pays for the crime and, if his civil rights were violated as part of the capture, the criminal may attempt to recover the damages to his civil rights.  And, no, I'll not forgetting those cases of true civil violations by the authorities.  In these cases, where the judge believes that there is some civil suit that is required, he may extend the statute of limitations to the required period.

The basic issue here is the fact of the crime, the crime needs to be punished under the law.  If the individual committed a crime, then that is the fact of the crime.  Anything else should be considered of a secondary nature.