The Raw Story | US courts routinely shackle teens accused of minor crimes: "Many US juvenile courts routinely shackle teens accused of minor crimes and deny them adequate access to a lawyer, a study released Wednesday has found.
Most teens in the study did not get to meet with a lawyer before a hearing to determine whether they should be held in jail prior to trial. They also rarely got to adequately discuss their case with a lawyer prior to the trial date.
Anywhere from 70 to 100 percent of the teens ended up pleading guilty, many at their first court appearance."
Somehow this does not surprise me at all. It was not that long ago that the courts determined that a case cannot be thrown out simply because the "Miranda rights" were not read. This leads me to believe that the minors probably did not even know what their rights were, and even if they did, the totalitarian way things are done now probably scared the kids into doing whatever was told to them, without question.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
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