Thursday, March 11, 2010

Darrent Williams conviction

There are times when our criminal justice system delivers a conviction and in so doing delivers some solace to victims but without delivering justice. Willie Clark's conviction today strikes me as one of those times. A guilty verdict has been rendered, some closure may be found for Williams family, the Denver Broncos and the city of Denver. I just don't think we'll ever know who actually shot Darrent Williams.

Willie Clark is undoubtedly a bad dude but I'm not convinced that he was the trigger man. Obviously I wasn't in the court room for the last 11 days either and I hope that justice was really served.

1 comment:

Andrew Oh-Willeke said...

The case doees highlight the problems of the three coercions of modern criminal procedure: (1) coersion not to testify from concern about having your criminal record exposed, (2) coersion to plead guilty from the sentencing penalty imposed for going to trial, and (3) coersion to testify in a way that favors the prosecution in exchange for leniency.