Is the Constitution Dead?

In 2010, a sixteen year old boy from Brooklyn, Kalief Browder, was accused of grand larceny and thrown in prison for it. He was entirely innocent. He remained in jail, awaiting his speedy trial, until after his twentieth birthday. Jennifer Gonnerman, in her article entitled "Before the Law", which was featured in The New Yorker last week, tells Kalief''s story, revealing the cruel realities of America's so called "justice" system. 

The Bronx criminal courts refused Kalief his constitutional right to a speedy trial. New York's law that a "speedy trial" must occur within six months is similar to most other states. However, according to Gonnerman, New York's time limit works differently because "the clock stops for many reasons- for example, when attorneys submit motions before trial- so that the amount of time that is officially held to have elapsed can be wildly different from the amound of time that really has". This might be no problem for the attorneys handling a case. No more than simply pushing around a schedule.  But, for the accused, this "technicality" means weeks more in jail, all the while, completely detached from regular life. This problem is compounded because "the Bronx courts are so clogged that when a lawyer asks for a one-week adjournment the next court date usually doesn't happen for six weeks or more". This happened to Kalief time after time again.

With New York giving the lawyers the ability to so easily delay trials, it is possible that there was another, more sinister, reason for the prosecuting attorneys' unpreparedness. Gonnerman explains the opinion of Kalief's lawyer, "Prestia . . . alleges 'mailicious prosecution'", suspecting that "'they were seeking undue adjournments of these cases to procure a guilty plea from plaintiff.'" In other words, the prosecuting attorneys were forcing Kalief to suffer in jail in the hopes of him eventually cracking, and pleaing guilty. It is likely that Kalief is not the only one suffering from this gross abuse of the law either. Gonnerman says, "In 2011, seventy-four percent of felony cases in the Bronx were older than sixth months". 

I believe that this issue demands attention of both the Supreme Court and lawmakers in Congress. Kalief deserves reparations for his suffering, and a solution must be proposed for the additional seventy-four percent of cases that are also dragged out past sixth months. The criminal courts are not just infringing upon constitutional rights with unfair stipulations, but also jeopardizing America's values. New York's laws are pemitting the court system to shift from one designed to defend innocent Americans, to one which heavily favors the prosecutors. This system, supposedly intended to protect Americans, is responsible for imprisoning more than a quarter of the world's total jail population, and has led Kalief to say, "I feel like I was robbed of my happiness".