We're Not Ted Stevens

All charges were dropped this week against former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, after prosecutors admitted that they didn't disclose crucial information to the defense and didn't exactly play if fair in charging him. He may be guilty, but prosecutors didn't follow the rules so he was cleared in the eyes of the law. The system is there for a reason, and justice was served.

But, as Joshua Holland points out in a great piece at Alternet, the justice system that cleared Ted Stevens isn't available to all of us. Those with money and power can conduct investigations to prove their innocence or - even if they're guilty - they can bring the legal firepower it takes to undermine the state's case with technicalities and procedural arguments. Holland writes:

Yet, reading about the (Stevens) case, I was struck by the question of what might have resulted from such a prosecutorial breach had Stevens not been a powerful, wealthy and -- let's not gloss over it -- white defendant.

I thought about the case of Madison Hobley. Hobley was sentenced to death for arson and murder. Prosecutors said he'd set his house ablaze, leading to the deaths of his family. The case rested primarily on a confession Hobley purportedly made to police, the testimony of a gas station attendant who said he'd sold Hobley a buck's worth of gas in a can, and the can itself.

Hobley, who had no previous criminal record, claimed he'd been forced to confess by four Chicago cops who'd chained him, beat him, kicked him and suffocated him with a plastic bag. The officers denied the charges. They said they'd taken notes during the confession, but they'd then spilled "liquid" on them and threw them into the trash.

The heart of injustice in our system is its inequality. The structure of our system is strong, but we won't have true justice as long as those with money can avoid wrongful (and legitimate) convictions while the poor are over-sentenced for crimes they did commit and convicted of crimes they didn't.