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‘False Hope’: Prosecutors Blast South Carolina’s New Fentanyl Homicide Bill
Solicitors call for broader legal reforms — including a state RICO law — to dismantle drug trafficking networks driving South Carolina’s opioid epidemic.
6 comments
So we think tougher laws will be the answer? Is there any kind of War on Drugs that has been going on for nearly half a century that we could turn to as a data set for whether we can arrest and prosecute our way out of the drug problem?
The “War On Drugs” has been going on for well over fifty years. Like every “war” since WWII, we have been on the losing end. WOD has been nothing more than a flimsy excuse to abridge primarily our 4th and 2nd Amendment rights, and likely a few others.
Who cares niggers are the problem.
I am assuming you don’t understand the article because you cannot read. Or write. Or think. But this comment is beyond stupid. Just like you.
So what’s the solution?
Am I the only one who is finding the seemingly never-ending list of demands or requests by law enforcement and solicitors for designer laws, a bit disturbing? In recent years, and especially this year, police and solicitors seem to constantly be asking for new laws, designed to make their jobs easier and give them an almost certain slam-dunk in court for so many special situations “for the victims”, “for our safety” or maybe “gently barbed, for our pleasure”. Whether “strangulation” laws, “fentanyl” laws, “sexually oriented crime” laws, “DUI” laws, “CDV” laws, or whatever, the list never seems to end.
While no doubt, this would make their jobs easier, is this really what we want or desire? Back when such things were actually taught in school, we had a course called “Civics”, where we were told that our adversarial system of courts, while not perfect, is one of the fairest in the world. Like it or not, it was supposed to give the prosecution and defense equal footing from which to present their cases and convince a judge or jury.
These recent wish lists from police and prosecutors seem to be crafted to guarantee them convictions with minimal effort. Of course, they wrap these requests in the irresistible packaging of being “for the victims”, “for the women”, “for the children” or some other idea so that only a world-class awful person would dare think of voting against these items; much like the bills named after someone’s deceased kid because the bill lacks enough merit to pass on its own without the emotional spin imparted with a deceased child’s name. We all know that bills based on emotion, rather than logic, make the best bills; don’t we? (eye roll)
These bills should scare the crap out of anyone who cherishes freedom and liberty as our Founding Fathers intended it. It is easy to be lulled into the train of thought that “I am not some awful criminal so I have nothing to fear from these laws. These laws will make good people safer and put criminals away where they belong.” Not necessarily so! Invariably, good or innocent people will get tangled up in these webs that are ostensibly woven to catch the bad people. Overzealous cops or prosecutors around the country have demonstrated that for decades, probably longer. Making it harder for a defendant to win a case and easier for prosecution to never lose puts us all in danger. What will the police and prosecutors ask for, next year? Doing away with the exclusionary rule? How about expansion of when police can enter your home without a warrant?
In those Civics classes we took long ago, I seem to recall a saying to the effect of, “It is better to let a hundred guilty men go free than to convict one innocent man.” (paraphrased)
Put another way, in the 1970’s Billy Preston song, “Will It Go Round In Circles”, a line in that song in a weird way, always kind of made sense to me. “I’ve got a story, ain’t got no moral
Let the bad guy win every once in a while”.
I hope our Legislators grow a spine and start saying “no” to those whose favorite cliche’ for decades has been, “We don’t make the laws, we just enforce them.”