Most people who pay attention to politics, focus on national and global events from a mainstream partisan perspective. We see and hear about terrible things, but ee tend to think that's happening "over there".

We see rigged court cases on a regular basis. Trump, Diddy, Manning, Stone, Alex Jones, Brett Kavanaugh, Officer Chauvin, January 6th, the list goes on and on.

We tend to think of these as a handful of bad outcomes in an otherwise fair and honest system. Do the right thing and you won't be in trouble.

Well... it happened to me too.

Our Totalitarian Legal System

For people whom the government has in its sights, the United States has ceased to be a free society. In their book The Tyranny of Good Intentions (Crown, 2008), Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton have made a strong case for this, and since they wrote, matters have gotten worse.

You might at first be inclined to dismiss this charge as exaggerated...

American defendants rarely suffer physical abuse, but psychological torture pervades our supposedly free system. Our authors here have in mind plea-bargaining. “In the United States today, plea bargaining has displaced trial by jury as the dominant method of criminal dispute resolution . . . 90 to 95 percent of all federal, state, and local criminal cases are settled by plea bargains”

But what has this to do with torture? “Defendants who insist on exercising their constitutional right to a jury trial risk a substantially increased sentence if they are convicted, and this sentencing differential alone is enough to make plea bargaining coercive” According to common law, a defendant must be proved guilty; but plea-bargaining enables the State to avoid its burden.

The authors denounce on similar grounds inducing one defendant to testify against others in return for lenient treatment. Blackstone condemned this practice in the eighteenth century, noting that such induced confessions cannot be trusted; but prosecutors, anxious at all costs for a high conviction rate, have no use for long-established historical rights.

Look, I'm just a recently single, older dude. Not some big player. I was renting a nice little place in the woods. Unfortunately, from a big out of state company with questionable local management.

Recently, I was surprised by a summons for non-payment of rent. So I took my receipt to the office to verify that I paid. It was like talking to a deer in headlights, but I got the problem solved... or so I thought.

If you're thinking something like this should be easy...

Yeah, me too.

But have we a choice? Supporters of the current system will claim that full trials for everyone accused cost too much. Wouldn’t the vast increase in costs that would result if plea-bargaining were abolished impose a draconian tax burden? But the answer to that is simple. We need a rigorous pruning of the legal system...

You may raise another objection. Will an innocent defendant so readily plead guilty? Won’t he trust that the safeguards against false convictions will insure an acquittal for him? Unfortunately, these safeguards have to a large extent gone by the board. People may be tried for hitherto unheard of “crimes”; and in their efforts to defend themselves, they face unprecedented obstacles.

A prime requirement for conviction under common law is mens rea you must intend to commit a criminal act in order to be found guilty. No longer does this restriction apply...

The assault on mens rea forms but one salient in the full-scale invasion of legal liberties. Not only may you be found guilty without showing criminal intent: you may also be convicted for activity that was not criminal when you did it.

They took me to court.

In Michigan, you can't sue for a debt already settled. In other words, the landlord shouldn't even have standing.

As if this were not enough, the modern prosecutor has means to disrupt the trial as well. Attorneys who defend too vigorously the “wrong” clients may find themselves charged with criminal conspiracy. Both attorney and client face asset forfeiture before trial, making resistance to prosecution next to impossible...

I have so far barely mentioned the most dangerous threat to our liberties. Let us suppose that, through skill or luck, a defendant is found not guilty. The government can still confiscate his assets. Even “those who are acquitted cannot recover their property without proving that there was no `probable cause’ for the seizure of their property” And what if you have never been charged with a crime at all? You are by no means safe. If government agents suspect a crime has taken place on your property, it is forfeit, even though you knew nothing at all about the alleged crime.

So, when I went to trial to show my documented proof of payment...

DENIED!!!

The judge wouldn't allow me to show proof, said she wasn't interested. She simply ruled against me.

In complete shock, I blurted "what the fuck was the point if I can't defend myself?"

Court was adjourned.

So, in spite of being right in both morality and law, I lost my home (just after I started making these cool videos too).

The great [Sir William Blackstone] stressed fixed rules of procedure that had been developed over the course of centuries of British law. Fundamental to Blackstone’s analysis lay a basic premise: people need protection from the government. Rights draw a privileged sanctuary around the individual, guaranteeing him against arbitrary power. As Blackstone saw matters, the law reflected no comprehensive scheme that a single mind had devised. Rather, “freedom slowly broadened down, from precedent to precedent,” as Tennyson later put it.

The government of the People has become a government Over the people.

We need to get back to basics.

Maybe it's too late.