Cost of crime too high in courts; Congress needs to make basic changes

Monday, January 30, 2012

What is the cost of crime?
Last week alone probably put Clearfield County on the hook for six figures. Jefferson County's tab is likely to approach a half-million dollars - and that isn't for the county jails, or the courthouses, or the judges, sheriffs, deputies, clerks, etc. Those day-to-day costs are paid by the taxes allocated for the annual budgets.
No, the extra huge chunks of money are needed for a major drug-selling trial in Clearfield County, and a double murder trial in Jefferson County.
Crime does pay - a whole lot of police, expert witnesses, lab analysts, psychologists - all the trappings of a trial.
Now go back to last year when a convicted Jefferson County murderer, Robert Riga, persuaded some Philadelphia-type federal lawyers that his guilty verdict was unjust because he wasn't afforded the assistance of the Italian government because he just might have had dual Italian and American citizenship at the time he shot a helpless man to death.
Now go forward to April 24 and November, when incumbents Sen. Bob Casey and Rep. Glenn Thompson will ask for your votes for re-election, and opponents will probably ask you to vote for them.
See the connection?
Crime has gotten to be far too expensive in the United States - because we have allowed the laws to tilt too far toward protecting the rights of the accused, and away from doing justice for victims of crimes.
No, we don't object to the costs of the two current trials. We don't like the costs, but we recognize the need for trials.
It's the endless appeals and retrials that pervert our system and divert tax money we don't have into time-consuming, costly reviews that make no sense.
We do not accept the need to have taxpayer-paid lawyers drumming up "fairy dust" theories for appeals of cases, sometimes years after the trials, absent the emergence of new evidence that has a high likelihood of reversing a verdict or reassessing a sentence.
The Constitution vests supreme power in the nation in the Congress.
It is up to Congress to overhaul the criminal code, and substitute statute law or jurisdictional limits for court-imposed case law, to rein in the kinds of ridiculous appeals that lead to retrials based on little more than the fanciful theories of inmates who have nothing else to do except dream up these things - and financed by taxpayers.
Yes, crime does cost too much - and taxpayers pay way too much for lawyers whose jobs depend, not on a search for truth or justice, but on creative fiction designed to justify endless appeals.
Federal members of Congress can change that, if they take the issue seriously.
But they won't do it, unless we insist that they do if they wish to receive our votes later this year.
- Denny Bonavita